Thanks in large part to the country’s foreign currency holdings and a shift in its central bank policy, the Congolese franc, which has consistently ranked as one of the weakest currencies in Africa all year round, rallied as high as 29%.
The impressive surge is coming just days after Rwanda and Congo signed a peace treaty in the White House.
Trump promises that everyone will make money after the Rwanda and Congo peace deal
United States President Donald Trump met with leaders from the Eastern African countries of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Paul Kagame and Felix Tshisekedi, last week, to end a 30-year-old conflict between the two countries.
Following the signing, the United States went ahead to further its mineral deal with both Rwanda and the DRC, which the U.S president said will “unlock new opportunities for the United States to access critical minerals and provide economic benefits for everybody.”
Congolese Franc performance
Bloomberg’s estimates show that the currency has outpaced the Ghanaian cedi, which had held the top position most of the year.
The president of the Central African nation, Felix Tshisekedi, stated in a state-of-the-nation speech that Congo’s foreign exchange reserves had increased 21% to $7.4 billion from the previous year.
The country witnessed a 32% increase in its revenue from copper this year.
Standing as the continent’s largest copper producer, DRC’s smelting capacity grew more quickly than mining, and a string of outages. Demand from data centers and electric vehicles is colliding with a limited supply.
The president of the country said in his speech that the franc’s rise in value relative to the dollar had provided stability that his “people haven’t known for many years.”
According to Sayen Gohil, a Congolese risk analyst at BMI, a division of Fitch Solutions, the franc has performed well recently due to deliberate monetary policies intended to reduce franc liquidity.
The analyst noted that the Banque Centrale du Congo has space to continue controlling franc liquidity in 2026, which will probably cause the currency to hold onto the majority of its gains.
The monetary authority disclosed that appreciation started in September after Congo’s central bank injected $50 million to mop up francs a month prior.
“We’ll intervene like everywhere else in the world if we see that the volatility is too high,” Governor Andre Wameso told Bloomberg on Dec. 4 in an interview in Washington.
“But here at this point, there’s no reason to intervene in the market.
The main dynamics that investors will be focused on are high copper prices, which are currently surging and will continue to encourage investment in the mining sector, progress on the DRC-Rwanda peace deal, including the associated Regional Economic Integration Framework,” he added.
