Africa Finance Corporation issues CHF 350m digital bond on SDX platform
Key points
- Africa Finance Corporation issued a CHF 350 million ($431 million) five-year digital bond on the SDX platform, the first digital bond issuance by an African institution via a central securities depository and exchange.
- The bond carries a coupon of 1.4925%, with Commerzbank AG as technical lead and Deutsche Bank as co-arranger.
- FINMA approved the merger of SDX into SIX's main CSD entity, SIX SIS, in May 2026, consolidating the platform's regulatory standing ahead of this deal.
- The issuance follows a gap in SDX digital bond activity since a KfW bond in June 2025, and is one of the larger transactions on the platform, behind UBS's CHF 375 million issuance in 2022.
- SDX's wholesale CBDC pilot remains active but was not utilised in this transaction, leaving open the question of when wCBDC settlement will feature in a live deal of this scale.
Africa Finance Corporation (AFC) has priced a CHF 350 million ($431 million) five-year digital bond through SIX using the SDX platform, becoming the first African institution to issue a digital bond via a central securities depository and exchange. The bond carries a coupon of 1.4925% and ranks among the larger issuances on the platform, though it falls just short of a CHF 375 million digital bond UBS placed in 2022. Commerzbank AG acted as technical lead arranger, with Deutsche Bank co-arranging the transaction.
The deal ends a quiet stretch for digital bond activity at SIX following a KfW issuance in June 2025, and arrives after a structural change at the exchange: FINMA approved the merger of SDX into SIX’s main central securities depository, SIX SIS, in May, a consolidation whose plans were announced in early 2025 under group chief executive Bjørn Sibbern. The platform continues to host a wholesale central bank digital currency (wCBDC) pilot, though that infrastructure played no role in this particular transaction.
For AFC, the stated rationale centres on diversifying its funding base in support of African development rather than on digital issuance as an objective in itself. The issuance adds a supranational African name to a roster of multilateral and sovereign issuers that have used SDX, and it raises a question worth watching: whether the institutional first-mover effect draws further African or emerging-market borrowers toward digitally native capital market infrastructure.