The world’s weakest currency – 1 Kenyan Shilling Worth 691
The Kenyan shilling may be suffering in the constantly fluctuating forex market, but it is still far more valuable than the weakest currency in the world.
Today, as of August 2025, just 1 Kenyan shilling (KES) equals 696 units of the Lebanese pound (LBP)—an enormous figure that highlights Lebanon’s currency collapse in stark relief.
To highlight the scale of the crisis, £1 (British pound) is now worth an astonishing 121,326 Lebanese pounds.
In U.S. dollar terms, one Lebanese pound is worth just $0.0000111229, meaning you’d need over 190,165 LBP just to equal $1.
Meanwhile, the Kenyan shilling is trading at approximately KES 129.32 to 1 USD, making it roughly 696 times stronger than the Lebanese pound.
How Did Lebanon’s Currency Collapse?
What was previously a thriving economy along the Mediterranean shore has seen its financial sector disintegrate in recent times. A mixture of hyperinflation, political gridlock, record unemployment, and a broken banking industry has caused the Lebanese pound to plummet in a historic situation.
The nation’s economy also relies heavily on imports, as $20 billion worth of imports were imported into the country in 2018, compared to just $3 billion of exports. That massive trade deficit, combined with a weak manufacturing sector, left the local currency extremely exposed.
The crisis was then made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequently further exacerbated by the Beirut August 2020 explosion, which devastated much of the capital city.
In 2023, Lebanon devalued its official exchange rate by 90% for the first time in 25 years—but even that extreme step couldn’t stem the pound’s slide.
Kenya’s Shilling in Context
On the other hand, whereas the Kenya shilling is highly devalued against other stronger currencies like the USD, it is far more stable and trustworthy. KES 1 is currently equivalent to approximately $0.007730, and the country has more sustainable macroeconomic policies than the Lebanon free-falling scenario.
And yet, Kenya also has fiscal headaches: mounting public debt, inflation, and rising import bill. All continue to pressure the shilling—but not nearly so calamitously as in Beirut.
Weakest Currencies in the World
As of June, 2025, exchange data lists the Lebanese pound as the world’s weakest currency, followed by Iran’s rial, Vietnam’s dong, Sierra Leone’s Leone
Laotian kip, Indonesian rupiah, and Uzbekistani som.
And yet the fact that 1 Kenyan shilling will now buy 696 Lebanese pounds is a grim illustration of just how low Lebanon’s economy has sunk—and of the fine art of walking the tightrope needed to keep national currencies on life support in an unstable world.
All currency exchange rates in this article were obtained from XE.com on June 21, 2025, using mid-market rates for accuracy. Exchange rates can fluctuate with market conditions and can vary slightly depending on the platform or institution.
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The world’s weakest currency – 1 Kenyan Shilling Worth 691