Zimbabwe

The Zimbabwe 100-trillion-dollar banknote has become global shorthand for hyperinflation—an image so widely circulated that it now functions almost as visual cliché. A single piece of paper bearing a number so large it openly acknowledges monetary failure, the note is frequently reproduced in textbooks, documentaries, and economic commentary as a symbol of currency collapse. Today, it circulates primarily as a novelty object rather than as evidence of lived experience. For this project, I burned one such note, treating it not as spectacle but as an endpoint—an already exhausted conclusion.

 

What proved more compelling were the instruments that preceded this terminal denomination, particularly the Special Agro-Cheques issued by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe during the final phase of hyperinflation under Governor Gideon Gono. These cheques were distributed to farmers in exchange for agricultural output and were redeemable for Zimbabwean dollars. In effect, they were not merely currency substitutes but currency intermediaries—paper instruments designed to access other, rapidly depreciating paper instruments.

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Each agro-cheque carried an explicit expiration date. Most were issued in mid-2008 and were valid only until December of that same year.¹ During this period, inflation accelerated to the point where prices were doubling approximately every 24 hours.² Time itself had become a monetary variable, and expiration dates were no longer procedural details but structural necessities. In everyday use, agro-cheques functioned as money. They were denominated in Zimbabwe dollars, accepted in daily transactions, and printed with the full visual language of sovereign currency: portraits, seals, serial numbers, and security threads. Legally, however, they occupied a liminal category—closer to vouchers or IOUs than to legal tender. At different points in time you could exchange banknotes for precious metals. These were exchanged for sand in an hourglass.³

 

This ambiguity allowed the state to inject liquidity into the economy while postponing formal acknowledgment of monetary collapse.In this sense, the agro-cheques operate as a form of meta-money: money whose primary function was not to store value, but to mediate access to value that was itself unstable. They are currency about currency—paper that existed to momentarily stabilize circulation rather than preserve purchasing power.Handling these objects today, years after their withdrawal from circulation, their instability remains materially legible. Some notes are stained; others carry faint, unexpected odors—tobacco, grain, storage dust—suggesting time spent in warehouses, pockets, and circulation loops never intended to endure. Even within the small batch acquired for this project, variations in paper stock and ink quality are evident. When mounted, the notes retain a sense of fragility, as if the imagery printed on their surface—such as the giraffe approaching a grain elevator—might outlast the economic system that produced it.

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References

1. Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, Special Agro-Cheques, 2008 issuance series.

2. Hanke, Steve H., and Kwok, Alex K.F., “On the Measurement of Zimbabwe’s Hyperinflation,” Cato Journal, Vol. 29, No. 2 (2009).

3. Agro-cheques were not formally designated as legal tender, though they were widely accepted due to necessity and state backing.