5 Francs Belgium - King Albert I

This piece was issued by the Banque Centrale du Congo in 1999, a period when the Democratic Republic of the Congo was barely a year into its renamed existence — Mobutu's Zaire had collapsed in 1997 under Laurent-Désiré Kabila's forces. Issuing a coin denominated in Belgian francs and bearing a Belgian king was a peculiar monetary choice for a sovereign state, reflecting the deep structural entanglement between Congolese and Belgian financial institutions that persisted long after independence in 1960.

Albert I died in a climbing accident at Marche-les-Dames in 1934, never having seen the full unraveling of the colonial order his reign helped entrench.