100 Francs

The Banque Centrale du Congo Belge et du Ruanda-Urundi was a short-lived institution, established in 1952 when the Belgian authorities separated the monetary administration of the Congo from the earlier Banque du Congo Belge. This note belongs to the opening years of that transition — a period when Brussels was attempting to rationalize colonial currency arrangements across three territories that shared neither economy nor infrastructure.

Waterlow & Sons had a long relationship with Belgian colonial currency contracts. The firm's liquidation in 1961 — the same year Congolese independence effectively ended the issuing authority itself — makes the timing of this series quietly significant.