Bukavu residents are relying on patched, hole-punched banknotes after banks in the eastern Congolese city closed following the capture of the provincial capital by the M23 rebel group, leaving many unable to access intact cash.
Shops and service providers are increasingly refusing the older, perforated bills — which appear to be notes banks had earmarked for destruction — creating confusion and straining already precarious household finances in the city of more than 1.3 million people. Local residents say the damaged notes resurfaced after the Rwanda-backed M23 seized Bukavu in February amid an escalation of fighting in the mineral-rich east.
Alain Mukumiro, a 36-year-old refrigerator technician, said he has been turned away by shopkeepers who refuse the only currency he has left. "All my money has serial numbers, but they refuse it," he said. Mukumiro said his family faced another night with empty stomachs because businesses would not accept the patched notes.
Residents and informal money-changers said the perforated notes now trade at a heavily discounted rate on the black market — roughly 10-to-1 for older bills in exchange for newer ones, according to Ruboneka Mirindi Innocent, one of several people working as money-changers in Bukavu. "We keep these banknotes because we don’t know what else to do, it’s just to help each other out," he said.
Some business owners decline the busted notes to avoid losses when they cannot use them to buy supplies. Zihalirwa Rutchababisha, who runs a repair equipment business, said his weekly profits have tumbled from $120 last year to about $20 under M23 control as sales slump and uncertainty grows.
The disruptions followed months of fighting that have compounded what humanitarian organizations describe as one of the world’s largest crises. Around 7 million people have been displaced in eastern Congo as more towns and cities fell under rebel control. Banks have remained closed not only in Bukavu but in other regional centers, including Goma, cutting off access to cash for most residents who work in the informal economy and are paid in cash.
A small fraction of state employees in rebel-held areas are now being paid by electronic transfer, but that arrangement covers about 2% of Bukavu’s population and does not ease day-to-day transactions for the majority.
David Kyanga, an economics professor at Bukavu’s Higher Institute of Commerce, said the only practical solution in the short term is for authorities in M23-controlled areas to formally accept the perforated banknotes as valid means of payment. Patrick Busu Bwasingwi Nshombo, the M23-appointed governor of South Kivu province, last week asked residents to exchange the hole-punched notes at a bank the rebels opened, but the operation was suspended days later after bank agents were overwhelmed by the volume of notes.
Kinshasa has refused to send new banknotes or reopen banks in rebel-held territory. Government spokesman Patrick Muyaya said no bank could safely operate amid the insecurity and questioned how banks could work under M23 control while the group faces U.S. Treasury sanctions.
It remains unclear how the perforated bills re-entered circulation; residents suspect they were taken from bank buildings during the rebel takeover. The presence of both intact and patched notes circulating simultaneously has increased tensions between buyers and sellers, disrupted commerce and left people searching for workarounds.
For families like Mukumiro’s, the closure of formal financial channels has turned routine purchases into sources of anxiety. "We don’t know who will save us," he said, reflecting a wider sense of uncertainty among civilians caught between a battered economy and a continuing armed conflict in eastern Congo.