Modibo Keita
Modibo Keita led Mali out of a federation that lasted two months and into a socialism that lasted eight years. He was a teacher and a descendant, by tradition, of the founder of the medieval Mali empire, and he came up through the French colonial assembly - a deputy in Paris and briefly a secretary of state in a French government. In 1959 the French Sudan and Senegal joined as the Mali Federation, with Keita as its president, on the argument that the small territories of French West Africa would be weak alone. It broke in August 1960, weeks after independence, over the division of offices and the pace of centralisation. Senegal seceded, and the Sudanese half kept the name Mali - a claim on the empire rather than on the federation. What he built afterwards was doctrinaire. He left the franc zone in 1962 for a currency nobody would trade, nationalised the import houses and the distribution network, set up state farms and collective villages, and ran a single party with a militia attached to it. The economy contracted, smuggling replaced trade, and by 1967 he had to devalue and go back to the French treasury. He answered the failure by radicalising: a cultural revolution in 1967 with committees empowered to arrest, and the dissolution of his own party's political bureau. The army removed him in November 1968 in a coup led by a lieutenant, and he died in detention in 1977 in circumstances his family have always disputed. Mali has had four successful coups since.
- Lived: 1915 CE – 1977 CE
- Nationality: Malian
- Roles: head_of_state, politician
