The Democratic Republic of Congo just signed a partnership with the International Finance Corporation to build its first-ever stock exchange. For a country sitting on some of the world’s richest mineral deposits, the fact that it has never had a functioning equities market is one of those details that makes you pause and reread it.
The agreement between the DRC Finance Ministry and IFC Country Director Malick Fall was inked on June 18, 2026. Finance Minister Doudou Fwamba Likunde Li-Botayi presented draft financial markets legislation to the Senate a week earlier, on June 11, laying the legal groundwork for what will become the Kinshasa Stock Exchange.
Building a market from zero
The DRC’s capital markets have historically been limited to treasury bonds and bank lending. No equities trading, no formal securities infrastructure, no central depository. For a nation whose mining sector alone generates enormous revenue, the absence of any mechanism for equity investment has been a structural bottleneck for decades.
The draft legislation aims to change that by establishing three core components: a financial market regulator, a central securities depository, and secure settlement systems. The DRC is building the entire plumbing of a modern stock market from scratch, not just the exchange itself.
