The Ksh20 coin is the legal money in Kenya, and its common term is “pound” among Kenyans.
There are mysteries surrounding why Kenyans started calling the Ksh20 note and subsequent highly regarded Ksh20 coin by that nickname.
Their roots may be traced back to the time when the nation was a colony of the British.
The government decided to use the same name scheme for its currency as Great Britain, which at the time used Shillings as a component of its currency unit.
During this time period, the currencies of Kenya, Uganda, Tanganyika, and Zanzibar all followed the British system of dividing money into pounds, shillings, and pence.
One penny was divided into two halfpennies, or four farthings and 12 pennies made one shilling.
There was a time when twenty shillings was all it took to buy a pound, hence the currency was originally referred to as Ksh20.
After World War I, the pound finally gained a household word in Kenya, despite its long history there.
At the time, the Mombasa Currency Board was superseded by the London-based East Africa Currency Board (EACB), which served the four existing protectorates in East Africa (Kenya, Tanganyika, Uganda, and Zanzibar).
In 1949, the EACB issued a new currency called the pound, which was equivalent to twenty shillings.
After the Central Bank of Kenya began printing and minting its own currency to replace EACB in September 1967, the pound note was no longer valid as legal tender.
Though Kenya discontinued the Ksh20 note in 1967 and Britain discontinued the Shillings unit in its currency in 1971, the name was adopted for the Ksh20 coin.
