Africa Finance Corporation (AFC) has raised CHF 350 million – approximately US$430 million – through a five-year digital bond that was listed, traded and settled on a regulated digital exchange, making it the first African institution to do so.

The bond was issued on the SIX Digital Exchange (SDX), the distributed ledger technology-based financial market infrastructure operated by Swiss exchange group, SIX, and is also listed on the traditional SIX Swiss Exchange. AFC described the issuance as the largest digital bond ever issued in the Swiss franc market.

The transaction is structured as a tokenised security using distributed ledger technology (DLT), with ownership recorded on a regulated digital register and settlement taking place through regulated digital market infrastructure operated by SIX SIS AG.

How the bond was structured

The bond was priced at a coupon of 1.4925 per cent with a five-year tenor, issued under AFC’s US$5 billion Global Medium-Term Note Programme. AFC noted the pricing aligned with its US$500 million benchmark issuance completed in June 2026.

The transaction was arranged by Commerzbank AG, which acted as Technical Lead, and Deutsche Bank AG London Branch, acting through the Deutsche Bank AG Zurich Branch.

Demand was heavily concentrated among Swiss domestic investors, who accounted for approximately 90 per cent of the order book, with the remaining 10 per cent coming from international accounts. Banks and financial services institutions represented the largest investor group at 57 per cent, followed by asset managers at 37 per cent and hedge funds at six per cent.

AFC holds dual investment-grade credit ratings – an ‘A’ with positive outlook from S&P and A3 with stable outlook from Moody’s.

What digital bonds are and why they matter

A digital bond is a debt security issued and recorded using distributed ledger technology rather than through traditional centralised systems. The bond exists as a token on DLT infrastructure, but retains all the characteristics of a conventional bond – principal, interest rate and maturity date.

Switzerland has emerged as one of the more developed markets for regulated digital bond issuance, underpinned by the country’s technology-neutral federal legal framework that recognises tokenised securities within existing securities law. The SIX Digital Exchange, which launched with its first digital bond in November 2021, has facilitated approximately 10 digital bond issuances totalling close to CHF 1.4 billion since inception.

Previous issuers on the SDX platform include SIX Group itself, which issued the first digital bond on the exchange in 2021, the City of Lugano, which has issued multiple digital bonds since 2023, and the World Bank, which in May 2024 priced the first Swiss franc digital bond by an international issuer – a CHF 200 million seven-year issuance that settled using wholesale central bank digital currency (wCBDC) provided by the Swiss National Bank under Project Helvetia.

AFC’s CHF 350 million issuance surpasses the World Bank’s transaction in size, making it the largest digital bond from an international issuer in the Swiss market by a considerable margin.

The broader tokenised real-world asset market has seen rapid growth. Tokenised assets exceeded US$24 billion in total value by February 2026, following 266 per cent growth in 2025, according to industry data. The fixed-income market that tokenisation is beginning to address is valued at approximately US$141 trillion globally.

The SIX Digital Exchange infrastructure

The SDX operates a fully integrated issuance, trading, settlement and custody infrastructure based on DLT. A key feature of the platform is its interoperability with traditional market infrastructure – SDX maintains links with SIX SIS, the Swiss national central securities depository, allowing digital bonds to be accessed by investors through their existing custodial arrangements.

This means institutions do not need to integrate directly with blockchain infrastructure to participate. The link between SDX and SIX SIS allows bond positions to be moved between the digital and traditional systems, ensuring digital bonds remain open to the same investor base as conventional issuances.

In May 2026, the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) approved the merger of SDX into SIX SIS, creating a consolidated central securities depository that can handle both traditional assets and digital securities within the same regulated infrastructure.

Some digital bond settlements on the SDX platform have used wholesale central bank digital currency issued by the Swiss National Bank as part of Project Helvetia, which has explored the use of tokenised money for settlement in regulated DLT environments. This represents one of the furthest-developed central bank experiments with wCBDC for securities settlement globally.

AFC’s capital markets strategy

The digital bond is AFC’s fourth Swiss franc issuance and its largest to date. The corporation’s first Swiss franc transaction was followed by a CHF 200 million four-year bond and then a CHF 150 million Green Bond issued in 2020, which was AFC’s inaugural green bond.

President and CEO of AFC, Samaila Zubairu, framed the transaction as part of a broader diversification of the corporation’s funding strategy.

“This transaction is about far more than achieving competitive pricing,” Zubairu remarked. “It marks another significant milestone in AFC’s funding journey and underscores the confidence global investors continue to place in our strategy, credit strength and development impact.”

“Expanding the range of capital solutions available to AFC will remain central to mobilising long-term financing at scale and delivering on our mandate to accelerate Africa’s industrialisation and economic transformation,” he added.

Executive Board Member and Head of Financial Services at AFC, Banji Fehintola, described the issuance as a signal of the corporation’s broader approach to capital markets innovation.

“The digital format of this bond is not an end in itself but a signal of our commitment to being at the frontier of innovation in the capital markets as we continue to diversify and strengthen AFC’s funding base to support Africa’s development,” Fehintola explained.

What AFC does

AFC was established in 2007 as a development finance institution focused on infrastructure and industrial investment across Africa. The corporation operates across power, natural resources, heavy industry, transport and telecommunications, combining financial and technical advisory services with project development and risk capital.

The organisation has 48 member countries and has invested US$18.5 billion across the continent since inception. Proceeds from the digital bond will support AFC’s general funding requirements and its capacity to finance infrastructure projects across Africa.

The broader context for tokenised debt

AFC’s issuance adds to a growing list of transactions from sovereign and supranational issuers testing DLT-based capital markets infrastructure. The European Investment Bank has issued digital bonds on multiple platforms. Siemens has used DLT for corporate bond issuance. In March 2026, the Bank of Canada, Export Development Canada, RBC and TD Bank completed Project Samara, issuing Canada’s first tokenised bond using DLT with settlement in wholesale central bank deposits.

The common thread across these transactions is the use of regulated infrastructure that bridges digital and traditional market systems, allowing institutional investors to participate without requiring wholesale changes to their existing custody and settlement arrangements.

For AFC, the transaction demonstrates that an African development finance institution can access DLT-based capital markets infrastructure at scale, pricing competitively against its existing US dollar benchmark curve. Whether the digital format will become a routine funding channel for the corporation or remains a periodic innovation will depend on how the broader tokenised bond market develops over the coming years – and whether the operational efficiencies promised by DLT translate into meaningful cost and settlement advantages as issuance volumes grow.

Last Updated on August 13, 2026 by Nick Ross