10 Centavos – São Tomé and Príncipe

In 1929, the currency situation in São Tomé and Príncipe, then a Portuguese colony, was defined by its integration into Portugal's monetary system. The official currency was the São Tomé and Príncipe escudo (STPE), which had been introduced in 1929 to replace the real at a rate of 1 escudo = 1000 réis. This change was part of a broader Portuguese monetary reform aimed at standardizing currency across its empire, creating distinct but pegged colonial escudos to replace the older, inflated real system.

Economically, this escudo was pegged at par to the Portuguese metropolitan escudo, meaning its value was entirely derivative and controlled from Lisbon. The colony's monetary policy was not autonomous, and the money supply was directly influenced by the needs of the Portuguese economy and the performance of the colony's dominant export sector: cocoa. By the late 1920s, São Tomé and Príncipe was one of the world's leading cocoa producers, and the currency's stability was thus tied to both Lisbon's decisions and volatile global commodity prices.

The year 1929 itself marked the beginning of the Great Depression, which would soon precipitate a catastrophic collapse in cocoa prices on the world market. While the immediate monetary mechanics in 1929 were stable on paper due to the fixed peg, the underlying economic foundation was about to be severely tested. The colonial escudo system would face immense strain in the coming years as export revenues plummeted, highlighting the vulnerability of a currency and an economy so rigidly linked to a distant colonial power and a single cash crop.