1 Zaïre

By 1987, Mobutu Sese Seko's renaming campaign — which had rebranded the Congo as Zaïre in 1971 — was showing its age alongside the country's collapsing economy. Inflation was accelerating sharply through the late 1980s, and the zaïre currency would effectively become worthless within a few years, requiring a new unit, the nouveau zaïre, introduced in 1993 at a rate of 3,000,000 old zaïres to one new.

Brass coinage of this denomination circulated only briefly before being rendered trivial by inflation.