Depicts right facing portrait of Richard Francis Burton, wearing a brimless cap on his head and local clothing on his upper torso. Inscribed to the left of the likeness is the date "1841", followed below by "1904". These dates are erroneous and not relevant to Burton, who was born in 1821 and died in 1890. Instead, they respectively correspond with the dates of birth and death of Henry Morton Stanley (1841–1904), another British explorer who journeyed through Somali territories.

In March 1854, Richard Francis Burton transferred to the political department of the East India Company and went to Aden on the Arabian Peninsula in order to prepare for a new expedition, supported by the Royal Geographical Society, to explore the interior of the Somali Country. It was in Aden in September of this year that he first met Lieutenant John Hanning Speke, who would accompany him on his most famous exploration. Burton undertook the first part of the trip alone. He made an expedition to Harar (in present-day Ethiopia), which no European had entered.

Following this adventure, Burton prepared to set out for the interior accompanied by Lieutenant Speke, Lieutenant G. E. Herne and Lieutenant William Stroyan and a number of Africans employed as bearers. However, while the expedition was camped near Berbera, his party was attacked by a group of Somali waranle ("warriors"). The officers estimated the number of attackers at 200. In the ensuing fight, Stroyan was killed and Speke was captured and wounded in eleven places before he managed to escape. Burton was impaled with a javelin, the point entering one cheek and exiting the other. It was no surprise then that he found the Somalis to be a "fierce and turbulent race". He describes the harrowing attack in First Footsteps in East Africa (1856).

The face value, the slash and dash representing the word "shillings", as in British contexts, surrounded by the texted value and the title of the Bank of Somaliland in Somali above.