Economic & Geopolitical History of Mali Part II: Pre-Colonialism, Colonialism, and Post-Clonialism
What happened after the Great West African Empires collapsed? We find out today
In part I, I explored Mali's lack of control over its gold trade and its economic dependence on high export commodity prices. I also delved into the history of the Ghana, Mali, and Songhai Empires. By 1591 AD, Morocco armed with European muskets (arquebuses), had destroyed the Songhai Empire and taken control of the gold-rich cities of Timbuktu, Jenne (“Jen”-”ay”), and Gao.
The Moroccan Berbers couldn’t hold the important cities of gold, trade, & Islam for long, so after 1612 they allowed the Tuareg Berbers to control the gold cities of Timbuktu, Gao, and Jenne as nominal vassals of Morocco. Over the centuries before the French arrived, these city states became a battle ground of influence between Tuareg Berbers, Sub-Saharan Fulani and Sub-Saharan Mandinka.
We discussed Tuaregs in the history of Niger, but just a reminder Tuareg Berbers/Amazigh were historically slave merchants, trade route protectors, and caravan guides who connected Black African empires to the North Africans.
African Paganism vs. Islamic Empires (1600s-1890s)
Thanks to Morocco destroying Songhai, Sahelian Africa became a contest between African paganism vs. Islam and Mandinka vs. Fulani tribes.
Fulani Paganism vs. Islam: In the Senegambian side of the former Mali/Songhai Empires, there was the pagan Fulani Kingdom called “Great Fulo” (1512–1776). They traded gold, kola nuts, and slaves with Europeans (increasingly France) and neighboring African states. As Fulo was experiencing food shortages and French Senegal was expanding & collecting slaves, the populace turned increasingly Muslim. Muslim clerics eventually gained power and launched an Islamic Revolution, destroying the pagan state & creating Islamic Fulani state.
Mandinka Paganism vs. Islam: In the heart of Mali/Songhai, there was the pagan-Mande ethnic Kaarta Empire (1650-1890) and the Muslim-Mande ethnic Bamana Empire (1712-1861). These empires conquered the leftovers of the Mali Kingdom, fought each other, reconquered Timbuktu from the Tuareg-Berbers, and other neighboring Kingdoms. By the 1800s, both Mande empires were destroyed in Jihad by Fulani empires.
Fulani Islamic Rule: By the 1800s, the Fulani Massina Caliphate(1818-1862) emerged and was destroying other empires in the former Mali empire, crushing African paganism, constructing Madrassas, and trying to conquer Gao & Timbuktu from the Tuareg Berbers. The Massina Caliphate was destroyed, and was replaced by the Fulani Toucouleur Empire (1852–1893), which had an empire that crushed many of the aforementioned Kingdoms under al-Hadj Omar Tall. After Omar died in 1864. The empire was divided amongst his sons.
The Senegal parts of the Toucouleur Empire became part of French Senegal, while the Malian parts became part of the last Muslim Mandinka Empire.
As the Fulani & Mandinka were conquering each other and having religious wars, by the 1800s, Europeans were industrializing and developed treatments for malaria like gin, tonic, & quinine (Qui-nah). Now Europeans could explore and colonize the hostile, mosquito inhabited areas of Africa. In addition, Europeans were now more technologically advanced. In the 1880s, the Africans had spears, musket guns, and rifles, but the Europeans had the maxim gun, which was the first fully automated machine gun.
The Wassoulou Mandinka Empire (1878-1898)
Samori Ture, a Malinké, was trying to recreate the borders of the Ghana-Mali-Songhai empires. He was a recent convert from African paganism into Islam, and he quickly became an Imam. He made a caliphate that would have encompassed modern day northern Ivory Coast, Southwest Mali, Sierra Leone and eastern Guinea. Eventually the French came in and crushed his empire.
French Colonialism of French Soudan, “Mali” (1892-1960)
After the Berlin Conference, France had claims to most of West Africa. France conquered the Fulani & Mandinka empires and labeled their territory French West Africa, where the capital was Dakar, Senegal.
France deposed the power of the ruling dynasties and religious leaders and replaced them with tribal groups & leaders that helped the French crush the Mandinka Empire.
The borders of the French territories where changed many times. The country we now Mali was part of Upper Senegal & Niger before its borders and name was rearranged to French Sudan/Soudan, since that’s what the area was historically called on Arab maps that the French obtained.
France, driven by Arab tales of African riches, anticipated Soudan to be an African El Dorado, but instead discovered an impoverished, semiarid land. So the French decided to conscript Soudanese Africans to pick cotton, farm peanuts, and raise cattle. Soudan became a financial burden on the French Treasury, subsidized by wealthier colonies like Senegal and Ivory Coast.
France utilized coercive tactics like forced labor, hut taxes, and threats of violence to make railroads to Dakar, France. The French “paid” Soudanese in beads and torn up clothes. In 1911, 1916, and 1917, Tuareg rebellions erupted against French rule, and failed.
Post-WW2
After WW2, France made huge reforms to the way they governed colonies and did reforms calling it a “civilizing mission”.
Economic Reforms: France massively increased investment in French Sudan. France had a fund called the Investment Fund for Economic & Social Development of Overseas Territories(FIDES), where from 1947-1957, France invested ~$80M in just French Soudan alone. France was using their American Marshall Plan funds to build roads, hospitals, schools, hydraulic works, and agricultural research institutes in their colonies, including Soudan.
In French West Africa, there was a huge imbalance between the economic productivity between the coastal colonies (Ivory Coast & Senegal) which were relatively successful, and the poorer hinterland (Soudan & Niger) which were poor. The coastal colonies produced 91% of French West Africa’s exports, while the hinterland colonies like Upper Volta (Burkina Faso), Soudan (Mali), and Niger received 90% of their budget from subsidies. Soudan was highly unprofitable and poor. It was France’s 5th poorest colony in 1953.
Political Reforms: In addition, post WW2, France ended forced labor and created the French Union, a political framework that bestowed Africans political representation in Paris’ National Assembly.
In French West Africa, the biggest party was Rally of Democratic Africa (RDA), led by future President of Ivory Coast, Felix Houphouet-Boigny.
During this time, Soudan (Mali)’s representative was Modibo Keita who tried pushing Felix Houphouet-Boigny for a deeper federation of French West Africa. Felix ignored Keita because that meant Ivory Coast continues to subsidize Soudan.
By 1958, Soudan and Black Africa had a choice, leave the French Union and lose French aid or remain. Soudan and most colonies chose to stay. The only country that chose to leave was Guinea.
The Pan Africanism Attempt:
But by Jan 1959, former colonies wanted independence instead. Soudan (Mali), Senegal, Dahomey (Benin), and Upper Volta(Burkina Faso) all were going to unite to become the Mali Federation and achieve independence. Ivorian President Felix Houphouet-Boigny wanted to prevent independence, fearing French Africa would be poor if independent. So Ivorian President Felix Houphouet-Boigny worked with French President Charles de Gaulle to bribe Yameogo Of Upper Volta to back out of the Mali Federation and de Gaulle threatened Hubert Maga of Dahomey to leave the Mali Federation or else France won’t finance a deep water port in Dahomey’s largest city, Cotonou.
So before independence in 1959, it was just Soudan and Senegal left to become the Federation of Mali.
The Mali federation achieved independence in 1960. But two months later, Senegal left, and Soudan renamed itself Mali. Leopold Senghor and Mobido Keita were both Pan African Socialists, so with ideological alignment why did the Federation fail?
Ideological Differences: Senghor favored pragmatic socialism, prioritizing alignment with France and advocated for the Mali Federation to be… well… a federation, whereas Keita believed in revolutionary socialism, aligning with the Soviet Union and advocated for Mali to be a unitary state.
Political disparities: Senegal and Soudan were politically different. France has been in coastal Senegal since the 17th century. Tribalism was minor among the Senegalese elite and the elite were educated Francophiles. In Soudan, tribalism existed and their elite weren’t as educated or as French-admiring as the Senegalese. The Soudanese harbored aspirations of restoring Mali’s Imperial glory (where Senegal was historically a vassal.) These differences led to disagreements over government posted positions.
Economic disparities: There was also wide economic & disparities between Soudan and Senegal. Since the creation of French West Africa, Senegal subsidized Soudan. Look below at the government budget of French West Africa to see how much more of a contribution Senegal was compared to Soudan.
Soudan was one of the poorest polities in the world. Meanwhile, in the late 1950s, the average Senegalese were richer than Egyptians, Moroccans, Tunisians, Taiwanese, or Thai (who were never colonized). Senegalese wages were nearly triple Soudanese in 1958. Senghor was worried about Soudanese flocking to Senegal and taking jobs away from the Senegalese.
Due to these irreconcilable differences, they split. Keita decided to rename Soudan to Mali anyway and attempted to take Senegal by force, but French officers told Keita to back off.
In August 1960, the Mali Federation disbanded and Senegal and Soudan(now Mali) had sour relations.
Modibo Keita (1960-1968)
Modibo Keita, claiming descent from Sundiata Keita, the founder of the Mali Empire, faced economic challenges due to Mali being landlocked. The country mainly sold peanuts, cattle, and cotton, and had to import everything (food, medicine, manufactured goods, fuel, etc). Keita made his country a one-party socialist state.
Modibo was a revolutionary, Pan Africanist Socialist. Modibo described his utopic socialism as “a system where there will be no unemployed, and there will be no multi-millionaires… a system where there will be no beggars, and where each will eat if hungry.”
Relations with the Communist Bloc: China and the Soviet Union (who were having a falling out with each other) competed to support to Mali. Soviets constructed hydroelectric dams and airports, and Chinese provided aid for growing more rice. The Soviet vassal state, Czechoslovakia helped Mali make oil refineries, railroads, trucks, refrigerators, and build airports. Some of these projects were grants and others were loans.
Relations with the West: Keita still accepted technical support and subsides from France, West Germany, America, and Israel.
Relations with France: Keita, unlike other French colonies, signed a limited cooperation accord agreement with France. Keita sought only economic aid and technical assistance for factories. Meanwhile the vast majority of French African countries signed up for the full French cooperation accords - defense, diplomatic, economic, commercial, technical and diplomatic. Keita also left the West African CFA Franc currency and created his own currency the Malian franc. Keita anchored the Malian Franc to the CFA Franc which was anchored to the French Franc.
Economic Strategy: Keita nationalized firms from the French and immediately made 23 state owned enterprises after independence - in factories, repair shops, steel production, packaging, bookshops, and pharmaceutical drugs. He was trying the import substitution industrialization model that every country has used to get rich. You slap tariffs on foreign goods and you try to subsidize domestic industry to make goods so you don’t have to import them. But instead of doing it the Anglo-American way with private enterprise, all enterprises was state owned (SOEs).
Virtually all of the SOEs were terrible and unprofitable that needed to be subsidized by the state. In Mali, just like most of Africa, state owned enterprises became black boxes for mismanagement and corruption. Ministers siphoned funds from the parastatal corporations under their control for foreign trips, patronage to their family, friends, and tribesmen. Contracts were awarded to firms that didn’t even deliver services. Project costs were grossly inflated for kickbacks. Company assets were stolen. Payrolls had ghost workers.
His country had a horrific current account deficit. His Malian franc currency was constantly depreciating and he tried to reduce inflation with import controls to save foreign currency. When you put import controls on needed goods you just create a black market instead. People were getting frustrated and people lost faith in his currency. Also, smuggling was rampant.
Mali’s finances were so terrible that the country went nearly bankrupt and started borrowing from the IMF in 1964… Just four years after independence…. To put in comparison of how bad that is, Gambia & Mauritania didn’t start borrowing from the IMF until 1977, Togo &Senegal in 1979, Ivory Coast in 1981, Guinea in 1982, Niger in 1983, Nigeria, Chad & Guinea-Bissau in 1987, and Benin in 1989.
Pan-African attempt again: Mali tried uniting with Ghana & Guinea in the non-contagious Union of African States, but the union died after 3 years.
Why? Besides being non-contiguous with Ghana, merging countries is a massively expensive bureaucratic undertaking that the countries could not afford to do. Their leaders also had ego clashes. The union died in 1963.
Malian Identity: Modibo’s party wanted to create a unified Malian identity based off their legacy of the Malian empire. However, that meant a national identity that favorited the Southern Mandinka, and ignoring the Tuareg & Arab Berbers in the North who they had historical issues with. When Keita did land reform, he disproportionally took land from Tuareg Berbers and gave benefits mostly to Mandinka people. In addition, the Keita tried to end Tuareg nomadism. The Tuareg minority felt oppressed so they rebelled.
Quash Tuareg rebels: A small group of Tuareg & Arab-Berbers started rebelling for an independent country in 1962-1964. The Malians violently put down the Tuareg Berber rebellion, and the Tuaregs never forgot the trauma.
Coup: In 1968, a group of young officers, led by Moussa Traore thought Keita was terrible so they removed him. Unlike the many coups we have talked about that were funded by France, this one probably was not. Charles De Gaulle, President of France and his foreign advisor, Jacques Foccart were shocked.
Moussa Traore (1968 - 1991)
Moussa deposed Keita in 1968, but the country suffered pain under him too.
Traore’s economic policy goal was trying to undue the unproductive, corrupt government run economy of Keita via privatization with IMF advisors. But there were many hiccups on the way. He also ran unfair elections to secure his “legitimacy” during his rule. Traore faced civil unrest from university students and was almost couped three times. By 1980, Traore repressed all dissent.
Issue #1: Agriculture
Lack of Irrigation: Traore did not invest enough in agriculture. Too much dependence on rain and not enough irrigation systems. Between 1968 to 1973, Mali and all the Sahel nations (Mauritania, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Niger, & Chad) suffered a drought that killed thousands of people. Locusts ruined harvests and Mali lost 40% of its cattle and food production. Another drought occurred in 1983 and 1984.
In addition, Traore failed to reform Keita’s terrible agricultural system. Traore continued utilizing the state owned marketing boards made during the colonial times, to act as a monopoly purchaser of surplus agricultural crops (cotton, millet, sorghum, corn, etc.) and then sell them on international markets for foreign currency. However, during France’s, Keita’s, and Traore’s reign, the marketing board paid the farmers a fraction of the price that the government would receive on world markets, effectively the government was siphoning their wages. A 1981 study showed that rice farmers were in Mali were paid 63 francs for a kilo of rice that cost them 80 francs to produce. Farmers were frequently paid months in arrears, crops were not collected in time, fertilizers and seeds and pesticides were delivered late, shortages of supplies led to corruption and favoritism. Marred with these problems, this is why Mali since independence has had one of the worst agricultural productivity in the whole world. It took very late in Traore’s administration to liberalize the marketing board system.
Issue #2: Malthusian Catastrophe: Due to French, Soviet, and Chinese investment & aid for hospitals and sanitation, Mali’s birth rate was exploding, while infant morality rates were plummeting. Mali had a population boom. The population boom added pressures on agricultural production, urban growth and government spending. Mali simply couldn’t cope with the demand for more schools, clinics, housing, and water supply. Mali suffered from soil erosion, degradation, and deforestation. Malian farmers were, on average, in the 1970s cultivating land 60 miles north of where they were during the colonial era. Tuareg Berbers started to leave Mali as their livestock were destroyed. Muammar Gaddafi opened up his country to Tuareg Berbers in Mali. 1000s of Tuaregs were recruited into Gaddafi’s armed forces.
Issue #3, Oil Shocks: Then came the oil shocks. After the 1973 Yom Kippur War, OPEC decreased production of oil, causing global oil prices to spike. Then oil prices increased again after the Iranian revolution and the start of the Iran-Iraq war. Mali, an oil importing country was adversely affected as oil imports was draining Mali’s foreign currency. Mali had to reduce imports of essential goods. Agriculture was impacted by higher fuel costs. Many Malian factories operated at low levels due to lack of imports.
Issue #4 Government Reforms: One of Traore’s biggest reforms was guaranteeing civil service jobs to university graduates. By 1980, more than 60% of the nation’s salary workers were employed in government agencies or government owned corporations. This gave Mali a weak private sector, meanwhile the government owned corporations were bloated with corruption, inefficiency, and mismanagement.
Issue #5, Inflation: Mali couldn’t manage its own currency. Continuous current account deficits put downward pressure on the Malian Franc, making imports more expensive. To tame inflation,, Traore rejoined the CFA franc in 1984.
Issue #6, Two Border Skirmishes with Burkina Faso: In late 1974, Traore invaded Burkina Faso to claim the Agacher Strip, supposedly rich in manganese, gas, titanium, and uranium. (Even to this day not much of these resources have been found… Burkina Faso & Mali both mainly sell gold).
Traore failed. Later after Thomas Sankara took over Burkina Faso in the 1980s, Sankara claimed the Agacher Strip, angering Traore. So in Christmas 1985, Traore tried again and sent his troops to invade Burkina Faso to claim the Agacher Strip. This skirmish killed ~300 people, so they ended up leaving the border to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to decide. The ICJ decided to split the strip between the two countries, ending the conflict.
Issue #7, IMF reforms causing riots: The country was nearly bankrupt so Traore went to the IMF for multiple bailouts.
The reforms required:
Selling unprofitable state owned enterprises to investors.
Allow foreign investors to invest gold mines to increase gold production
Remove fuel & food subsidies (reduce govern spending/borrowing to make food and fuel cheap for the population)
Remove price controls and let firms determine prices via market forces
Cut super generous civil service wages and pensions.
Due to removing price controls & subsidies, inflation skyrocketed and there were riots.
Arab & Tuareg Berber Rebellion (1990-1995) #2: Also, 1990, another drought and famine took place that rampaged the Sahel. The Arab & Tuareg Berbers did routine killings and kidnappings to get their voices heard for autonomy/independence. Traore was just as harsh on the Tuaregs as Keita was.
Eventually, people were tired of the ineptitude, there was the 1991 Revolution where rallies for democracy happened in urban and rural communities. Traore tried killing the protestors but by March 26th, the military removed Traore.
Conclusion
So far not so good. After Morocco destroyed the Songhai Empires, we had tribal & religious wars during the power vacuum. By the 19th century, France stormed in and colonized them. After two failed Pan-African attempts to merge with Senegal and Ghana & Guinea, the first President tried a socialist import substitution industrialization strategy which failed and got couped. Then the second president tried neoliberal & austerity reforms and got couped as well. Part 3 here!
Really enjoying this series. Very informative. Thank you
Another interesting chapter in your series.