The short version
The Republic of Rwanda has one live bond in our set. It is borrowed in US dollars, it pays a fixed rate of 5.5% that never changes, and it is a bullet — market shorthand for a bond that repays the entire amount borrowed in one go on the maturity date, with nothing paid off along the way. Our tracker notes there is no sinking fund, meaning no money is set aside or repaid in advance: the principal simply sits outstanding until 9 August 2031 and is then paid back in full.
That is the arrangement most people already picture when they think of a bond, and it is the arrangement several other African sovereigns do not use. It also means the maturity date on this bond means what it appears to mean. On an amortising bond — one that repays in slices — the maturity date is only the date of the last slice, and readers who assume otherwise get the repayment profile badly wrong. Here there is no such trap.
Our tracker records Rwanda as a non-restructured credit: the terms below are the terms the bond was sold with in 2021, not terms rewritten later in a negotiation with creditors. It also records the bond as non-call and non-put, meaning neither the government nor the investors can bring it to an end early. What was agreed in 2021 runs to 2031.
Where these terms come from
This page is unusually well sourced, and it is worth saying so plainly. The terms below are taken from the issuer's own prospectus — the offering document Rwanda published when it sold the bond, dated 5 August 2021 and hosted on the government's own minecofin.gov.rw website.
A prospectus is the primary document in this whole exercise. It is what the borrower itself puts in front of investors, setting out the amount, the interest rate, the payment dates, the identification codes and the redemption arrangements. Everything else — data vendors, news coverage, our own records — is a copy of it at one remove. When a figure on this site comes straight from a prospectus published by the government that owes the money, that is as close to the source as it is possible to get, and it is the standard the rest of the site is trying to meet.
One term on this page does not come from that document, and it is flagged as such below.
The one live bond
A single US dollar line, paying interest twice a year on 9 February and 9 August, and repaying everything on the final date.
5.5% due 9 August 2031
Rwanda issued this bond on 9 August 2021 with a ten-year life. Our tracker describes it as a plain fixed-rate US dollar bullet — no instalments, no rate changes, no options for either side to end it early.
The amount outstanding today is the same US$620,000,000 that was borrowed, because a bullet repays nothing until the end. That figure will not move until 9 August 2031, when it goes to zero in one payment.
- Currency
- US dollars confirmed
- Coupon
- 5.500%, fixed for the life of the bond confirmed
- Final maturity
- 9 August 2031 confirmed
- Amount outstanding
- US$620,000,000 confirmed
- Repayment
- Bullet — the full principal is repaid on 9 August 2031, with no sinking fund and nothing repaid earlier confirmed
- Interest dates
- 9 February and 9 August each year, twice a year; the first payment was made on 9 February 2022 confirmed
- Day count
- 30E/360 inferredCarried as a market convention rather than read from the prospectus body; our tracker lists it as still to confirm inferred
- Denomination
- US$200,000 minimum, then in additional steps of US$1,000 confirmed
- 144A twin
- US78347YAL74, the parallel US tranche of the same borrowing confirmed
How to read the terms above
Five pieces of jargon that appear on almost every bond page on this site, explained here against a bond simple enough that nothing else gets in the way.
What the coupon is
The coupon is the rate of interest the borrower promises to pay on the amount borrowed. Rwanda's is 5.500% and it is fixed, which means it is written into the terms once and never changes for the life of the bond. On US$620,000,000 of principal that is US$34.1m of interest a year, every year, until 2031. Some sovereign bonds elsewhere have coupons that rise on a set date — a step-up — or that can be paid in more bonds rather than cash. Rwanda's does neither. The rate agreed in 2021 is the rate paid in 2030.
Why there are two interest dates
The bond pays interest twice a year rather than once, on 9 February and 9 August. Those two dates are six months apart and are anchored to the 9 August issue date, so each payment covers roughly half a year of interest. The first one fell on 9 February 2022, six months after the bond was sold. The August date is also the date the principal comes back in 2031, so the final August payment carries both the last half-year of interest and the entire US$620,000,000.
What 30E/360 means, and why it is flagged
Interest does not only get paid on those two dates — it builds up continuously in between, and anyone buying or selling the bond partway through a period needs a rule for splitting it. That rule is the day count convention. 30E/360 is one of the common ones: it treats every month as having 30 days and every year as having 360, which makes the arithmetic tidy at the cost of being slightly artificial.
We show 30E/360 as inferred rather than confirmed. It is the standard convention for a bond of this type, but our tracker records that it was assumed rather than read out of the prospectus body, and keeps it on its list of things to check. It is the only term on this page in that position.
Reg S and 144A: one bond, two identifiers
This bond has two identification codes, and that surprises people. XS2373051320 is the Reg S identifier and US78347YAL74 is the 144A identifier. They are not two bonds. They are two tranches of the same borrowing, sold under two different sets of securities rules — Regulation S covers sales to investors outside the United States, and Rule 144A covers sales to certain large US institutions. Because they are distributed and settled through different channels, each tranche gets its own ISIN, the international code that identifies a security.
The economics are identical on both: the same 5.5% coupon, the same 9 August 2031 maturity, the same claim on the Republic of Rwanda. Our tracker stores the Reg S code as the main identifier and records the 144A code alongside it, both confirmed from the prospectus. If you see one of the two codes quoted somewhere and not the other, nothing is missing — it is the same bond seen through a different door.
What the US$200,000 minimum tells you
The denomination is the smallest slice of the bond anyone can hold: US$200,000 of face value here, and above that in additional steps of US$1,000. So a holding can be US$200,000 or US$201,000, but never US$50,000.
That threshold is the clearest signal on the page about who these bonds are for. A minimum ticket of US$200,000 puts a single holding beyond most individual savers and squarely in the hands of institutions — funds, insurers, banks, asset managers buying on behalf of other people's pensions and savings. It is worth keeping in mind when reading anything about African Eurobonds: this is a wholesale market between governments and professional investors, and the terms are written accordingly.
Rwanda's first Eurobond has already been repaid
Rwanda has borrowed in international markets before. Its debut bond, a 6.625% line due 2023 with the identifier XS0925613217, raised US$400m and was repaid in full at its 2023 maturity. Our tracker records it as matured and off the live universe, which is why it does not appear above.
This is worth knowing for two reasons. First, if you come across a reference to a 6.625% Rwandan bond, it is that instrument and it no longer exists — the money was paid back and the bond was extinguished, which is what is supposed to happen at the end of a bullet's life. Second, it means the 5.5% due 2031 is Rwanda's second time doing this, not its first.
What we are not sure about
Our tracker keeps its own list of things still to confirm. It is short on this page, and we repeat it here rather than smoothing it over.
The day count convention is assumed, not read from the prospectus
Every other term on this page was taken from Rwanda's own 2021 prospectus. The day count is the exception: 30E/360 is carried as a market convention, and our tracker holds an open action to confirm it against the body of the prospectus.
Our tracker judges the difference sub-tolerance — meaning that if the true convention turned out to be a different standard one, the effect on any calculation would be small. That is a reason not to worry about it, not a reason to present it as confirmed, so it stays flagged as inferred above.
A routine data check is still open on our side
Our tracker also carries an internal check unrelated to the bond's terms: watching the first weekday data run for a rejected Rwanda row, matched by ISIN. It concerns our own record-keeping rather than anything Rwanda has agreed to, but it is on the tracker's open list, so it is named here too.
Where every figure here comes from
Our tracker names the document by title and location rather than giving a full web address, so we cite it in words rather than linking to it.
| What it tells us | Source |
|---|---|
| The Reg S and 144A identifiers, the coupon, the issue and maturity dates, the interest dates, the amount, the denomination and the bullet redemption | Republic of Rwanda, prospectus for the Rwanda Eurobond due 2031, dated 5 August 2021, published on the government's minecofin.gov.rw website |
| A cross-check of the issuer, the 5.5% fixed coupon, the 9 August 2031 maturity, the US$620m size and the absence of call or put options | The Terrapin record for XS2373051320, together with the cbonds Rwanda country page |
| The description of the 2021 deal as a US$620m ten-year Eurobond | News published on minecofin.gov.rw by the Rwandan government |
| The debut 6.625% bond due 2023, its US$400m size and its repayment at maturity | Rwandan government records, as summarised in our tracker's source list alongside the minecofin.gov.rw news on the 2021 issue |
| The 30E/360 day count | Not from a document — this is a market convention we have assumed, flagged as inferred above and still to be confirmed against the prospectus body |
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 →