10 Francs

The Banque Centrale du Congo Belge et du Ruanda-Urundi was a short-lived institution, established in 1952 to replace the earlier Comité Monétaire and wound down after Congolese independence in 1960. This note circulated across an enormous and administratively unwieldy territory — the Belgian Congo alone was roughly seventy-five times the size of Belgium itself — which meant that physical condition of surviving notes varies sharply depending on whether they saw urban or rural use.

Waterlow & Sons had a long relationship with Belgian colonial monetary authorities. The firm's liquidation in 1961, the same year Congolese currency was reorganized under the new Banque Nationale, means this series represents one of the final Waterlow-printed issues for the region.