High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Aksumite currency was the first native currency to be issued in Africa without direct control by an outside culture like the Romans or Greeks. It was issued and circulated from the middle of the height of the Kingdom of Aksum under King Endubis around AD 270 until it began its decline in the first half of the 7th century. No sub-Saharan state would mint coins after Aksum until the Kilwa Sultanate in the tenth century.