100 Francs 'Moise Tshombé'

The Banque Nationale du Katanga existed for barely two years, created in 1960 to support Moïse Tshombé's breakaway regime immediately after Katanga's unilateral secession from the newly independent Congo. The international community largely refused to recognize the state, yet the banknote infrastructure was sophisticated enough to commission Waterlow & Sons — a firm with a long history of printing colonial and post-colonial currency across Africa.

Tshombé's government collapsed in January 1963 when UN forces ended the secession, and the entire Katangese currency series was demonetized shortly after. Surviving notes were not systematically destroyed, which is why uncirculated examples surface with some regularity — but the political instability of those two years meant many notes were hoarded rather than used, complicating any attempt to assess true circulation figures.

Pick lists only a single signature variety for this denomination, suggesting limited issuance relative to lower values in the series.