I am collecting coins around the world from 1939 and I am having a hard time with Africa. Mainly due to colonization of Africa, I am not finding currency that was used during this time except for a few. I think also, Numista's coin map, does not reflect total areas using a specific currency at a given time. Anyone have insight to this for me?
I'm not sure this would help you but to find coins dated 1939 in Africa, you could search "1939" in all issuers and then go through the resulting 30 pages (not counting tokens) and pick out the African countries. Like you say, you would not find much. If you want to know the coins in use in 1939 in colonies, that is a more difficult question and I'm not sure there is a simple way.
On the map of the Geacron project, you can type in the year 1939 and see how borders ran accross Africa in that year. It will give you a hint of which countries and issuers to look for.
I can only find these African countries with coins struck in 1939:
British West Africa (4)
East Africa (2)
Sao Tomé & Principe (4)
Seychelles (4)
South Africa (8)
Southern Rhodesia (7)
I would be content with currency used just before or just after as well. The idea is coins used at the start of WW2 so if they are minted before but in circulation, that would be ok. I have all but one of those
