The short version
The Democratic Republic of the Congo — the issuer is recorded as The Democratic Republic of the Congo / Ministry of Finance — sold two bonds to international investors on 16 April 2026. Both are borrowings in US dollars, both pay a fixed rate of interest that never changes, and both were admitted to the London Stock Exchange's Main Market on the day they were issued. One runs to 2032 and pays 8.750%; the other runs to 2037 and pays 9.500%.
These are DR Congo's debut international bonds. A debut issue means the country had no existing bonds of this kind trading in international markets before this one, so there is no long history of its own terms to compare against — which is exactly why the details below are taken from the listing record rather than from descriptions of the deal.
Both bonds are amortising. That means the amount borrowed is paid back in slices on a schedule, rather than in a single lump on the final day. The single-lump arrangement is called a bullet, and it is what most people picture when they think of a bond. The exchange listing labels both of these lines AMTSNG NTS — amortising notes. Press coverage of the deal described them as bullets. That correction is the most important thing on this page, and it has its own section below.
Because they amortise, the 2032 and 2037 dates are the dates of the last instalment, not the only repayment date. No principal has been repaid on either bond yet.
A last piece of arithmetic: the exchange lists four lines for this issuer, but there are only two bonds. Each bond was sold in two parallel tranches with separate identification codes, explained in the section on Reg S and 144A below.
This is Kinshasa, not Brazzaville — two different countries
There are two neighbouring countries with almost the same name. This page is about the Democratic Republic of the Congo, whose capital is Kinshasa, sometimes written DR Congo or DRC. It is not about the Republic of the Congo, whose capital is Brazzaville, which is a separate sovereign borrower with its own bonds and its own page here: the Republic of the Congo page.
The two are routinely conflated, including by data providers. Our tracker keeps an explicit identity guard for this issuer, recording the CUSIP issuer code 24811W as the marker for Kinshasa's paper and naming the Brazzaville lines that must be kept off this page: the legacy 6% due 2029 with ISIN XS0334989000, and the lines XS3376882687 and XS3223166409. None of those belongs to DR Congo.
If a figure you have seen elsewhere for "Congo" does not match anything here, the first thing to check is which of the two countries it refers to.
The two bonds
Both are in US dollars, both were admitted to the London Stock Exchange's Main Market on 16 April 2026, and both have a minimum trading size of US$200,000 — meaning they are sold in blocks of that size, which in practice puts them out of reach of small individual buyers. Both pay interest twice a year on 16 April and 16 October, on a 30E/360 day count — a standard market rule for working out interest between payment dates that treats every month as 30 days and every year as 360. Those last two points are US dollar market convention rather than figures we have read in a document, and are tagged accordingly below.
8.750% due 16 April 2032
The shorter of the two debut bonds. The exchange lists it as "8.750% AMTSNG NTS 16/04/32" — an amortising note, not a bullet.
Its coupon, size, maturity, structure and denomination are confirmed from the listing. The dates on which it pays principal back, and the split between those dates, are not published: they follow a pattern seen on comparable African sovereign amortising bonds, and are flagged as such.
- Currency
- US dollars confirmed
- Coupon
- 8.750%, fixed for the life of the bond confirmed
- Final maturity
- 16 April 2032 confirmed
- Amount outstanding
- US$600,000,000 confirmed
- Repayment
- Amortising — repaid in instalments, not in one lump at maturity confirmedThe schedule itself — three equal instalments on 16 April 2030, 2031 and 2032 — is a peer pattern we have applied, not a published schedule inferred
- Interest dates
- 16 April and 16 October, twice a year inferred
- Day count
- 30E/360 inferred
- Denomination
- US$200,000 confirmed
- Listing
- London Stock Exchange Main Market, admitted 16 April 2026; not classified in the listing record as an FCA plain vanilla bond confirmed
- 144A twin
- Recorded only as a partial code beginning US24811WAA; our tracker treats it as cosmetic and stores the Reg S line above
9.500% due 16 April 2037
The longer of the two debut bonds, sold on the same day as the 2032 and on the same terms in every respect except its coupon, its size and its dates. The exchange lists it as "9.500% AMTSNG NTS 16/04/37".
As with the 2032, the fact that it amortises is confirmed by the listing; the dates and sizes of the instalments are not published and are carried as a pattern.
- Currency
- US dollars confirmed
- Coupon
- 9.500%, fixed for the life of the bond confirmed
- Final maturity
- 16 April 2037 confirmed
- Amount outstanding
- US$650,000,000 confirmed
- Repayment
- Amortising — repaid in instalments, not in one lump at maturity confirmedThe schedule itself — three equal instalments on 16 April 2035, 2036 and 2037 — is a peer pattern we have applied, not a published schedule inferred
- Interest dates
- 16 April and 16 October, twice a year inferred
- Day count
- 30E/360 inferred
- Denomination
- US$200,000 confirmed
- Listing
- London Stock Exchange Main Market, admitted 16 April 2026; not classified in the listing record as an FCA plain vanilla bond confirmed
- 144A twin
- US24811WAB46, SEDOL BVR0CV4 — the same borrowing, recorded as cosmetic confirmed
The correction: the news said bullets, the listing says instalments
When these bonds were sold, coverage of the deal described them as bullets — bonds that repay everything borrowed in one payment on the maturity date. The London Stock Exchange listing describes them differently. Both lines are admitted under names containing AMTSNG, the exchange's abbreviation for amortising notes: bonds that repay the borrowed amount in instalments over their last few years. In market slang these are called sinkers, because the outstanding amount sinks step by step instead of staying flat until the end.
This is not a small distinction, and it is not a matter of wording. It changes when the money comes back. A bullet 2032 bond returns the whole principal in April 2032. An amortising 2032 bond has already returned a third of it in 2030 and another third in 2031. The average pound or dollar lent is therefore repaid sooner on the amortising version, and a bond whose money comes back sooner is a different instrument from one whose money comes back later — even when the coupon, the size and the final date are identical.
Because a price is just today's value of a future stream of payments, moving payments earlier moves the price. Our tracker records that valuing these bonds as if they were bullets would have produced a materially wrong figure — an overstatement, in the case of the 2032 — and it names that error as exactly the mistake our calculations are built to avoid. The check was run both ways to confirm the instalment schedule was actually being applied.
The reason we caught it is the house rule our tracker states plainly: the universe of bonds comes from public records, and the terms come from the exchange listing and the offering documents, never from the press. News coverage is useful for knowing that a deal happened. It is not the record of what was sold.
"The bonds amortise" and "three equal instalments on these dates" are not equally well established
It is worth separating two claims that the correction above can easily blur together. That these bonds amortise is confirmed: it is in the instrument names on the exchange listing. That they repay in three equal instalments on 16 April 2030, 2031 and 2032, and on 16 April 2035, 2036 and 2037, is inferred. No published schedule for these particular bonds has been read.
The instalment pattern comes from the shape that comparable African sovereign amortising bonds have followed — three equal instalments in the final three years, falling on the coupon anniversary. Our tracker records the same basis being used for Kenya's 2031 and Cameroon's 2031 bonds, and flags it in its own audit table rather than presenting it as fact.
So the correction is strong where it matters — these are not bullets — and provisional in its detail. Being right that a bond amortises does not entitle anyone to be confident about the exact dates.
Reg S, 144A, and why four listings are two bonds
Large dollar bonds are usually sold in two parallel tranches. The Reg S tranche is aimed at investors outside the United States; the 144A tranche is aimed at certain large US institutions. They are the same borrowing by the same government on the same terms, but each tranche carries its own identification code, which is why an exchange can show four lines for two bonds.
For DR Congo the exchange shows XB78 and XB79 for the 2032, and XB76 and XB77 for the 2037. Our tracker stores the Reg S line in each pair — XS3344646875 for the 2032 and XS3344646958 for the 2037 — and treats the 144A sibling as cosmetic: recorded for identification, not used as a separate instrument. It notes this is the same convention it applies to Cameroon and Benin.
The 2037's 144A code is US24811WAB46, with SEDOL BVR0CV4. The 2032's 144A code is held only as a partial string beginning US24811WAA; we have not seen the full code, so we do not print one.
What we are not sure about
Our tracker keeps its own list of things still to confirm against the original offering documents. Everything on that list is repeated here rather than quietly smoothed over.
The instalment schedules have not been read in a document
The dates and the equal-thirds split shown for both bonds are seeded from the pattern that comparable African sovereign amortising bonds follow, not from a published schedule for these bonds. Our tracker flags both in its audit table and carries an open action to confirm them.
The document that would settle it is each tranche's Pricing Supplement, published as a regulatory announcement. The base offering circular our tracker has (the RNS document 6796Z_1-2026-4-8.pdf) covers the borrowing programme as a whole rather than these two tranches, and the exchange's own documentation field for this issuer is blank — so the supplement has to be found among the regulatory announcements rather than downloaded from the listing page.
The payment frequency, the day count and the coupon dates are convention, not record
Paying interest twice a year, on 16 April and 16 October, on a 30E/360 day count, is what a US dollar sovereign bond issued on 16 April would normally do. The exchange listing does not state it — the relevant field shows a dash — so we have applied the convention and tagged it as inferred throughout.
This sits on the same open action as the schedules: it is to be confirmed against the Pricing Supplement when that document can be reached.
One 144A identifier is incomplete
The 2032 bond's 144A sibling is recorded in our tracker only as a truncated code beginning US24811WAA. Because our rule is that a published identifier must trace to a document, we show the partial string rather than completing it from guesswork. Nothing on this page depends on it: the stored line for the 2032 is the Reg S ISIN XS3344646875.
Where every figure here comes from
Every term on this page traces to a public record, or is labelled as inferred where it does not. Our tracker names the following sources and gives no web addresses for them, so we cite them in words rather than linking.
| What it tells us | Source |
|---|---|
| The four listed lines, the amortising structure, both coupons, both maturities, the 16 April 2026 admission date, the two Reg S ISINs, the 2037's 144A code and SEDOL, the US$200,000 denomination and the Main Market listing | The London Stock Exchange issuer page for The Democratic Republic of the Congo (exchange code XB77) and the individual instrument pages beneath it |
| The borrowing programme the bonds were issued under, and the US$200,000 denomination | The base offering circular published as a regulatory announcement, document reference 6796Z_1-2026-4-8.pdf |
| A cross-check of the 2032's coupon, size and maturity | Two commercial data records for XS3344646875 and for DR Congo, named in our tracker; we cite them in words and do not link to data vendors |
| The instalment dates and the equal-thirds split on both bonds | Not from a document — a pattern taken from comparable African sovereign amortising bonds, flagged as inferred above and still to be confirmed against each tranche's Pricing Supplement |
| The twice-yearly payment frequency, the 16 April and 16 October coupon dates and the 30E/360 day count | Not from a document — US dollar market convention, flagged as inferred above |
| News coverage of the deal | Our tracker lists African Business, Ecofin, Bloomberg, Mwango and african-markets as press coverage. It is treated as background only: where the press and the listing disagreed on how these bonds repay, the listing decided it |
How we work out the price
Nothing on this page is a price. Terms change rarely — a coupon, a maturity date and a repayment schedule are fixed when the bond is sold — so a reference page can state them once and stand. Prices change all day, so they live on the price page and only there. If a figure here ever disagrees with one there, this page is the one to distrust, and we would like to hear about it.
What the two have to do with each other is this. On a normal trading day a closing quote for these bonds reaches us from the market, and that anchors what the price page shows. Between closes the price moves with the things that move this market: US Treasury yields, how much extra return investors demand for African sovereign risk, market volatility and, for commodity exporters, commodity prices. Where a bond repays in instalments rather than in one go, the calculation also has to know how much of it is left on any given day — which is what the repayment schedules above are for. Get a schedule wrong and the published price is wrong.
Information only. This page is general educational material about how this market works. Nothing here is investment, financial, legal or tax advice, or a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Prices shown elsewhere on this site are indicative and are not an offer to trade.
See live African Eurobond prices →