The wealth of Africa
Money in Africa
Presentation
Supported by
The CarAf Centre
www.britishmuseum.org
What types of money
have been used in Africa?
Front cover image: cowrie shells given to Scottish explorer Mungo Park
in West Africa in 1796, British Museum
Which is the best money?
What do you want from money?
Source 1: Cowrie shell
British Museum
Source 2: Gold coin
British Museum
Which is the best money?
What do you want from money?
Light
Source 1: Cowrie shell
British Museum
Source 2: Gold coin
British Museum
Which is the best money?
What do you want from money?
Light
Easy to carry
Source 1: Cowrie shell
British Museum
Source 2: Gold coin
British Museum
Which is the best money?
What do you want from money?
Light
Easy to carry
Hard-wearing
Source 1: Cowrie shell
British Museum
Source 2: Gold coin
British Museum
Which is the best money?
What do you want from money?
Light
Easy to carry
Hard-wearing
Good for small purchases
Source 1: Cowrie shell
British Museum
Source 2: Gold coin
British Museum
Which is the best money?
What do you want from money?
Light
Easy to carry
Hard-wearing
Good for small purchases
Good for large purchases
Source 1: Cowrie shell
British Museum
Source 2: Gold coin
British Museum
Which is the best money?
What do you want from money?
Light
Easy to carry
Hard-wearing
Good for small purchases
Good for large purchases
Impossible to forge
Source 1: Cowrie shell
British Museum
Source 2: Gold coin
British Museum
Which is the best money?
What do you want from money?
Light
Easy to carry
Hard-wearing
Good for small purchases
Good for large purchases
Impossible to forge
Cheap to make
Source 1: Cowrie shell
British Museum
Source 2: Gold coin
British Museum
Which is the best money?
What do you want from money?
Light
Easy to carry
Hard-wearing
Good for small purchases
Good for large purchases
Impossible to forge
Cheap to make
Good for propaganda
Source 1: Cowrie shell
British Museum
Source 2: Gold coin
British Museum
Which is the best money?
What do you want from money?
Light
Easy to carry
Hard-wearing
Good for small purchases
Good for large purchases
Impossible to forge
Cheap to make
Good for propaganda
Source 1: Cowrie shell
British Museum
Attractive
Source 2: Gold coin
British Museum
Which is the best money?
What do you want from money?
Light
Easy to carry
Hard-wearing
Good for small purchases
Good for large purchases
Impossible to forge
Cheap to make
Good for propaganda
Source 1: Cowrie shell
British Museum
Attractive
Ability to control supply
Source 2: Gold coin
British Museum
Which is the best money?
What do you want from money?
Light
Easy to carry
Hard-wearing
Good for small purchases
Good for large purchases
Impossible to forge
Cheap to make
Good for propaganda
Source 1: Cowrie shell
British Museum
Attractive
Ability to control supply
Internationally accepted
Source 2: Gold coin
British Museum
What other types of money
were there?
What values do each of these
items have?
Source 3: Iron hoe blade, Sudan
British Museum
Source 4: Kissi penny, Liberia
British Museum
Source 5:
Salt bar, Ethiopia
British Museum
Source 6: Manilla, West Africa
British Museum
Counting Cowries
Using cowrie shells as currency involved counting
large numbers of the small shells. Special systems
for counting the shells were developed to make
this task easier.
Source 7
40 = 1 string
2000 = 1 head = 50 strings
20,000 = 1 bag = 10 heads
Cowrie counting in Nigeria, in Zaslavsky 1999: 225
What are the inconveniences
of this type of money?
Source 8:
Counting cowries
(The caption says
that 1000 cowries
= 1 French franc)
British Museum
Source 9:
A Ugandan boy
buys a bible with
cowries, c. 1900
(Some of these
are strung over
his arm; others are
in the bundle on
the man’s head)
© RCS Photo
Archive, University
of Cambridge
How easy was it to impose
a colonial coinage?
Source 10
The lowest unit of British currency at the time was
the farthing [1/4 penny]. In Nigerian currencies the
lowest unit was the value of 5 cowries in Igboland.
Thus, even the farthing, worth between 25 and
32 cowries, was five or six times the value of the
lowest currency unit in southern Nigeria.
Ofonagoro 1979: 635
How easy do you think it was for
the British to persuade people to
use their coins?
Source 12: 1/10th pennies,
British West Africa, 1908
(issued in response to local needs)
British Museum
Source 11:
String of cowrie shells
British Museum
Getting used to the new
currency
Some Europeans believed that African people
would have difficulty understanding new, colonial
currencies, and so took steps to educate them.
In fact, the use of African traditional ‘currencies’ was
far more complex than the simple way Europeans
used money.
Source 13
For a token of 50 francs, for example the station
chief hands the African 50 grams of lead, or
50 beads, or 50 nails, etc., so that the African
understands the relative value of the token.
French efforts to show African people the value
of the tokens they issued in Gabon, described
in Zay 1892: 250
The education process did not
work. Can you think of any reason
why not?
Source 14: Factory token
Franceville, Gabon, 1880s
British Museum
Hut Tax
One of the ways that colonial rulers tried to
encourage people to use their coins, as well as
to raise money to pay for running the colony,
was by imposing a hut tax. This tax had to be
paid in coinage at a fixed amount per hut that
someone owned, and became very unpopular
among African people.
Source 15
At present, the chief item in the receipts from
taxes is the hut tax, derived from a small annual
payment per hut by natives.
Hut tax in Kenya, described in Eliot 1905: 190–191
Source 16
Taxes had to be paid in money and no longer in cattle.
Africans had to pay a hut tax of 1 Rand per year...
a man who worked on the mines for three months
could earn enough money to pay the hut tax.
Hut tax in southern Africa, described
in Callinicos, 1980
How easy do you think it was for
the British to persuade people to
use their coins?
Source 17: Hut tax collection in
Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), 1938
© RCS Photo Archive,
University of Cambridge
How important was the hut tax
to the British?
Source 18:
Rhodesian hut tax token
(receipt for payment of hut tax)
British Museum
What uses did money have for
colonial powers?
What message is this banknote
trying to get across?
Source 19: Thousand franc banknote, French West Africa, 1945
(The woman on the right is Marianne, the symbol of France)
British Museum
What uses did money have for
independent countries?
What message is this coin trying
to get across?
Source 20:
20 cedis coin, Ghana, 1991
British Museum
What uses did money have for
independent countries?
What message is this coin trying
to get across?
Motto
Source 20:
20 cedis coin, Ghana, 1991
British Museum
What uses did money have for
independent countries?
What message is this coin trying
to get across?
Motto
Cowrie
Source 20:
20 cedis coin, Ghana, 1991
British Museum
What could be the problem
with paper money?
What has gone wrong with the
Zimbabwe economy?
What is the point of the poster?
Could this have happened with
traditional types of African
currency?
Source 22: Ten trillion dollar banknote
(detail), Zimbabwe, 2008
British Museum
Source 21: Zimbabwe banknote poster, 2009
The Zimbabwean © TBWA/Hunt/Lascaris
British Museum
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