Nairobi, April 6 -- In February I attended a speaking event at Tanzania's largest bank, CRDB. Banks are staid, mostly boring, places so you never expect big surprises. But I got one at CRDB.

Turns out that at its admittedly well-appointed headquarters building on Dar es Salaam Ali Hassan Mwinyi Road, CRDB is developing a museum of banking. It is a modest museum, but it is easy to see how in the distant future that is something that would be taken out and made into a fully fledged museum on money, not just banking. Perhaps a Great Museum of East African Money.

I imagine a museum showing the first currency, cowrie shells, the pennies with holes in the middle, and the East African shilling, would spellbind digital-era and other 21st centur...