100 Francs Sir Henry Morton Stanley, Pattern

Stanley patterns from the DRC's 1999 series were produced as proposed collector issues, never adopted for circulation — the country was mid-conflict, with Laurent-Désiré Kabila's government barely two years into power following the collapse of Mobutu's Zaïre. The Banque Centrale had more pressing concerns than commemorative coinage.

Stanley himself died in 1904 a British subject, having renounced his American citizenship — a biographical irony given that his Congo explorations were conducted under commission from Leopold II, whose regime over the same territory became one of the colonial era's most documented atrocities.