Central Bank of Kenya's Governor Dr. Patrick Njoroge unveiled new currency notes during the 56th Madaraka Day celebration over the weekend.

Design

The bank notes will bear the KICC image with an embodiment of Lion, Elephant, Rhino, Buffalo and the giraffe. The notes will bear various symbols which represent the country's diverse richness and revenue builders.
Denominations of the new currency will be in 50,100,200,500 and 1000 shilling notes. The 50-shilling note symbolizes green energy with the 100-shilling note symbolizing agriculture. The KShs.200 and KShs.500 notes will have social services and tourism images respectively.
The Kshs.1000 note will display governance images. Prior to the announcement, the CBK governor also added that the note will be completely withdrawn by 1st October,2019. 'The emergence of counterfeits has become a great concern. All the Sh1000 notes were withdrawn by a gazette notice on Friday. Those in possession [of the bank notes] have until October 31, 2019 to release them', said Mr. Njoroge while speaking on the issue of counterfeit.
The other denomination notes will be phased out slowly. These notes will have features that make them accessible to the visually impaired people.

Feel

The feel of the notes will also be different to account for the visually impaired to easily distinguish the different notes. The Kshs. 50 will have one slanting bar at the edge of the note with the continuing notes having additional bars for each. The Kshs. 1000 being the highest value will bear five bars.

Security

The notes' continuous security threads will change color from red to green on each of the banknotes. The Kshs. 200,500 and 1000 notes will have additional rainbow colors on the thread. A golden bad will also be visible on the back of the notes which will show their values when you tilt the notes.

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