One of the last non-decimal coins.

Mauritania and Madagascar are the only two countries in the world to still use a non-decimal currency. That is, a currency, where the number of sub-units in a main unit is not a power of 10. This is really a technicality as in both cases, the sub-units are no longer used in practise.

The Islamic Republic of Mauritania is a country in Northwest Africa. It is the 28th largest country in the world and has 4.4 million citizens. Most live in the temperate south, as 90% of its territory is situated in the Sahara desert. It was colonised by France in the 20th century, gaining independence in 1960. Since then there have been several coups. The 2019 elections were considered the country’s first peaceful transition of power since independence.

In Mauritania, from 1973 to 2018 The (old) Ouguiya was divided into Khoums. 5 Khoums = 1 Ouguiya. By 2018, the Ouguiya had been devalued such that the government issued a new series of notes and coins, the New Ouguiya. This dropped a zero from the old currency. One new Ouguiya was worth 10 old Ouguiya.

The new 20 Ouguiya coin, minted by the Monnaie de Paris, is trimetallic. That is, made of three different metals: Bronze-plated steel, Nickel-plated steel and Brass-plated steel. The coin is the newest of only five circulating trimetallic coins ever minted. Interestingly all five have a denomination of “20” with the other four all being “20 Francs” (three from France and one from Monaco).

I really like the camels depicted on this coin. Evidently I am not alone in this, as the coin won the “Best circulating coin” award in the 2019 coin of the year awards in Berlin. I often feel that the design on bi- and tri-metallic coins is simply “dumped on” the coin without consideration. There doesn’t appear to be an attempt to build the changes in metal into the design. Although it occurs to me that this may also be an anti-counterfeiting device – it is potentially harder to make a counterfeit coin in multiple metal, and correctly line up the design which continues across the changes in metal.

The obverse of the coin has the country name, in Arabic, around the edge, along with the value and year, also in Arabic.

The center contains a star over a crescent moon. There is also a palm tree and plant.

I picked up the 20 Ouguiya as part of a complete 2017-2018 set of coins from Mauritania. The set contains a nice mix of metals. All plated steel, although the smallest is copper-plated, and the 10 Ouguiya is bimetallic, leaving the rest either Nickel-plated or stainless steel. The 10 Ouguiya is also decagonal (10-sided) and the Heptagonal (7-sided). A good mix of shapes and sizes make the coins easier to tell apart for vision impaired people, as well as anyone needing to find coins by touch in a dark environment.

I haven’t found any records of coins being minted for Mauritania since 2018. There was a 20 Ouguiya polymer banknote, printed by the Canadian Bank Note Company in 2021. This note will circulate alongside the coin of the same denomination. Will we see another 20 Ouguiya coin? Or another trimetallic coin? Time will tell.