Collection: Banknotes of Somalia

In 1991, Somalia's central bank ceased to exist, along with the rest of the State. The shilling banknotes that people carried in their pockets that year continued to circulate for more than three decades, increasingly torn and mended with adhesive tape, because no one replaced them.

A country without a central bank

Without an issuing authority, merchants and armed factions printed their own batches of shillings, practically indistinguishable from the original pre-war ones. The IMF even calculated that more than 90% of the cash in circulation in the 2010s was illegitimate, and yet the country continued to use it out of sheer collective trust.

The first issues

The Somali shilling was born in 1961 upon the unification of the former British Somaliland and Italian Somaliland under UN mandate, with bilingual banknotes in Italian and Somali. In 2023, the Central Bank of Somalia printed new banknotes for the first time in nearly thirty years.

What you will find here

Somali shillings with Pick reference and actual condition.

Shipping

Protected and tracked from Spain.

Discover more banknotes from the region in African Banknotes.

If you are interested in this area, combine with Somaliland and Ethiopia.