RWANDA, 50 francs, 1977

Description

Rwanda, notorious in recent memory for the attempted annihilation of one ethnic group by another, now a relatively coherent, relatively modernizing, sort of liberal police state, in which people can substantially do what they want as long as they don’t express certain thoughts. Regionally punches above its weight. It has developed an industrial infrastructure and has supported international trade.

It has been habitual, on the collecting side of numismatics, for “Africa” to exclude the Mediterranean coastal states, which are typically lumped in with the other Arab states in the category “Middle East.” Generally speaking, there was a colonial period and an independent period.

By “Modern World Coins” we mean here, generally, the round, flat, shiny metal objects that people have used for money and still do. “Modern,” though, varies by location. There was some other way they were doing their economies, and then they switched over to “modern coins,” then they went toward paper money, now we’re all going toward digital, a future in which kids look at a coin and say “What’s that?” We’ll say: “We used to use those to buy things.” Kids will ask “How?” The main catalog reference is the Standard Catalog of World Coins, to which the KM numbers refer.