The file: Kinshasa sells dollars to itself
The Democratic Republic of Congo goes to its own investors tomorrow with a dollar-denominated Treasury bond. The finance ministry is asking for 40 million dollars over two years at 8% annual interest, with bids due at noon on 28 July, principal amortised every six months and coupons paid quarterly. The notice went out on 22 July. It sits inside a third-quarter issuance programme aiming at 400 million dollars from the domestic market.
Two things make this worth the ink. The first is the currency. Congolese investors have taken hard-currency paper eagerly all year while local-currency issues have gone begging, which tells you what Kinshasa's banks and pension money think about the franc over a two-year horizon. The first half of 2026 pulled in 1.1 billion dollars through foreign-currency public securities. The second is the price. Eight per cent in dollars, from a sovereign that is simultaneously projecting a 560.3 billion franc treasury surplus for July, roughly 243 million dollars, is a government paying up for liquidity it says it does not immediately need. Cash surpluses are monthly and lumpy; salary and mining-revenue cycles are not. Anyone selling fuel, fertiliser or equipment into Congolese state-adjacent buyers should read the coupon as the real cost of Kinshasa's working capital, not the budget line.
What a broken mining convention now costs
An ICC tribunal has ordered Cameroon to pay Sundance Resources 616 million dollars in damages after finding the state unlawfully stripped the company of the Mbalam iron ore project and breached its investment obligations. Mbalam was the flagship of the Cameroon-Congo iron corridor to Kribi, promised for a decade and delivered by nobody. The award puts a number on a thing that Central and West African ministries have treated as free: the retraction of a permit already granted. It also lands in a season when several governments in the region are rewriting mining codes and reassigning ground. Iron ore tonnes do not move because of an arbitration award. Term-sheet drafting does.
Harare's lithium goes deeper into Chinese hands
Zimbabwe has lined up Chinese partners for a 300 million dollar lithium project, extending a supply relationship in which the country has become a significant feedstock source for Beijing's battery industry. The demand side is cooperating for now: readers of CATL's first-half report put the group's factory utilisation near 95%, which is not a number consistent with the battery glut narrative of the past two years. Southern African concentrate that used to look speculative is being contracted at plant-utilisation prices.
On the wire
Brent last printed at 96.78 dollars on 26 July, up 6.3% on the prior session, before headlines that the United States and Iran had halted strikes sent crude sharply lower, with one widely followed market account logging Brent down 6% and WTI down 8% on the session.
The Baltic Dry Index rose 0.7% to 2,743, a one-week high, with capesizes leading the recovery.
COMEX copper's last print was 6.3575 dollars per pound on 26 July, down 2.4% from 6.511, with Chile's fiscal copper reference committee not due to submit its 2027 to 2036 price projections until 24 August.
Opposition candidate Brian Mundubile and running mate Makebi Zulu walked to a rally at Chambishi after a police blockade, in the middle of the Copperbelt's mining towns; police deny cancelling the rallies.
Mali's mines ministry now forecasts industrial gold output of 43.2 tonnes in 2026 and below 60 tonnes a year through 2029.