Introduction
The sequence of events in Mali during the 2012–2013 period is well known to those who follow the country. A coup d’état was staged by disgruntled military personnel in March 2012, putting an end to nearly twenty years of procedural democracy. The weak state apparatus then lost control of the northern two-thirds of the country to a variety of rebel groups with different agendas, including Tuareg separatists, Islamists, drug traffickers, and al-Qaeda affiliates. With rebel groups pushing south in January 2013, the French military intervened, eventually reclaiming the major northern cities for the Malian state. Elections were held in July–August 2013, followed by continuing attacks in the north. As of early 2015, a ceasefire accord had been signed between the government and major rebel groups (BBC 2015a).
During this period, most outside development groups either left the country or temporarily shut down operations, with only some forms of essential emergency assistance continuing. While it is clear that Mali’s 2012 coup d’état and subsequent rebellion created much hardship for those living in the northern and southern parts of the country, little is understood about how rural populations managed to adapt their livelihood strategies during and after this difficult period. This article explores the changes that occurred during this period of uncertainty, the role of the minimalist state, and the implications of both of these factors for future livelihood security and development initiatives in Mali. Exploring rural livelihoods in this context is important because such an examination yields insights about what happens when a minimalist state apparatus contracts even further during a period of political instability.
The ways in which Mali muddled through the 2012–2013 period have left two distinct aid landscapes: one to the north of the Mopti region and another to the south. The north remains a militarized zone where few donors are active and most outside actors direct their efforts to antiterrorism initiatives. While many useful projects are being funded in this part of the country—including efforts related to health, food security, and agriculture—the ultimate rationale for many of them has to do with addressing the root causes of terrorism, which are frequently framed as poverty and ignorance (Miles Reference Miles2012; Annan Reference Annan2014).
In contrast to the north, the south has increasingly become a zone of free-market activity. Since 2013 the donor community has been keen on promoting private sector actors as key players in their approach to improving agricultural production. Independent of these initiatives, there has also been a significant increase in cotton production as well as artisanal gold mining in this period, both of which can be problematic for the environment. The result is a free market ‘“Wild West”’ of sorts in the southern part of the country.
Scholarly Context and Methods
Much has been written on the weak state in the African context. Some of this scholarship focuses on the contraction of the African state under neoliberalism. This literature essentially breaks down into two threads: one that is focused on the reduction of government under structural adjustment, and another that examines the gradual transfer of public functions from government to nongovernmental organizations. The scholarship detailing the withering of the African state under structural adjustment focuses on cuts to government functions and the related social programs that were facilitated by loan conditionalities imposed by international financial institutions (IFIs) (Geo-Jaja & Mangum Reference Geo-Jaja and Mangum2001). In Mali, structural adjustment led to the liberalization of the cereals market, the demise of import substitution, and cuts to agricultural extension, public health services, and higher education (Loewenson Reference Loewenson1993; Bergamaschi Reference Bergamaschi and Whitfield2009; Moseley et al. Reference Moseley, Carney and Becker2010).
The literature on the transfer of public functions from government to nongovernmental organizations is based to a large extent on Geiger and Wolch’s (Reference Geiger and Wolch1986) notion of the “shadow state,” a term they coined to describe the increasing importance of the voluntary sector to the operation of the welfare state in the U.K. and the U.S. during the 1980s. Trudeau (Reference Trudeau2008) discusses how this trend has continued to unfold in the U.S. and now includes prisons as well as domestic and international security functions. This trend has subsequently moved from its Anglo-American heartland to Africa via the donor community. Roberts (Reference Roberts2014) has analyzed the proliferation of consulting firms which increasingly deliver U.S. foreign assistance. Mann (2015) observes that in Mali certain functions of the state were increasingly passed over to NGOs beginning in the 1970s—although, he points out, not at the cost of state power. The latest phase of development, as Miraftab (Reference Miraftab2004) explains, has even begun to bypass NGOs, with increasing use of public–private partnerships to deliver aid.
Another distinct body of literature looks at the collapse of the African state due to domestic discord (sometimes ethnically based), corruption, and in situ– or ex situ–generated violence. Somalia, for example, is often referred to as a country without a government or as one of the world’s “non-states” (Little Reference Little2003). Other states, such as Nigeria, continue to function, but their high levels of corruption make them predatory (Samatar & Samatar Reference Samatar and Samatar2002). While Mali has long had a weak state (Bergamaschi Reference Bergamaschi and Whitfield2009), corruption under the presidency of Amadou Toumani Touré (known as ATT) reached such high levels that it led to popular dissatisfaction with the government and, arguably, insufficient levels of support to the military to fight a Tuareg insurgency in the north. Both factors contributed to the March 2012 coup that ousted Touré from power (Whitehouse Reference Whitehouse2012). The influence of outside Islamist groups has been a continued reason for instability in northern Mali and across the region (Annan Reference Annan2014).
Weak states and insecurity have been particularly challenging for rural livelihoods in the affected regions. While many rural dwellers have been forced to leave such areas (Moseley Reference Moseley2013a), others have figured out ways to survive. While the challenges faced by villagers during periods of political insecurity are unique, these adaptations may also be seen along a continuum of other rural livelihood struggles in the contexts of colonialism (Watts Reference Watts1983) and globalization (Carr Reference Carr2011).
The research for this article consisted of interviews with civil servants, NGO employees, and members of rural households in southern Mali in June of 2014, as well as a review of government and NGO reports regarding humanitarian and development initiatives. This research was limited by the security situation on the ground during the 2012–2014 period (especially in the north), but was supplemented by the author’s twenty-five years of Mali-related research and work experience.
Food Security and Mobility in Northern Mali
Mali’s northern regions of Mopti, Timbuktu, Gao, and Kidal are divided into roughly three different ecosystems: the dry savanna grasslands, the seasonally inundated inner Niger Delta, and the desert. Northern Mali is more lightly populated than the southern parts of country. Of the northern regions (or provinces), Mopti is by far the most populated, with two million people, followed by Timbuktu (682,000), Gao (544,000), and Kidal (68,000). Traditional rural livelihoods in northern and central Mali are well adapted to the constraints of the different ecosystems, with the population divided roughly into the categories of agriculturalists, agro-pastoralists, pastoralists, agro-fishers, and fishers (Davies Reference Davies1996). The most secure livelihoods tend to be those that are well capitalized (providing families with resources to fall back on in hard times) or those that involve multiple strategies spanning different types of environments. These different livelihoods are deeply intertwined and complementary (as trade between different types of producers is frequent and necessary) and often depend on a high degree of mobility. The need for mobility is most evident with pastoralists and fisher folk, but members of farm families also migrate seasonally after the harvest.
Northern Mali has experienced a series of droughts in the past several decades, with particularly severe occurrences in the early 1970s and mid-1980s. The 1990s and early 2000s were relatively good in terms of rainfall, although the years preceding the 2012 coup had below average rainfall for the northern part of the country, and the famine early-warning services (such as USAID FEWS) warned of acute food insecurity for 2010 and 2012 (Fominyen Reference Fominyen2012). There are customary ways of dealing with this variability, but these coping mechanisms often depend on mobility and are frequently compromised by political insecurity. For example, transhumant herders (both Fulani and Tuareg) traditionally spent periods of the dry season in the Inner Niger Delta, allowing their cattle to graze on bourgou grasses (Echinochla stagnina) when the outer dryland areas were less productive. Once the rains began and the new grasses emerged in the dryland areas, these groups would move out to take advantage of these highly nutritive grasses. The timing and extent of this annual ebb and flow was frequently adjusted according to river and rainfall patterns (Moorehead Reference Moorehead1991; Benjaminsen Reference Benjaminsen2008). There was also an ebb and flow of farm laborers between inundated rice fields in the Inner Niger Delta and dryland (mainly millet) fields. Not only did the timing of harvests differ, but labor flows would shift depending on rainfall and river levels in any given year (Davies Reference Davies1996).
Following the coup d’état in Bamako in March 2012, political insecurity disrupted and compromised rural livelihoods in northern Mali (see map). Insecurity fomented by Islamist insurgents in areas claimed by some groups as a separate Tuareg state known as Azawad (Moseley Reference Moseley2013b) led to a large number of displaced people, food scarcity, and challenging circumstances for those trying to deliver emergency assistance. According to the UNHCR (2013), in late 2013, almost nine months after the French intervention, there were approximately 460,000 displaced Malians (out of 3.3 million in the four northern regions), including about 350,000 internally displaced refugees, and another 110,000 outside of the country. The reasons for displacement were multiple. Some people had fled to escape violence from rebel groups and/or reprisals from the Malian military, while others had left because of lack of food and disruption of livelihood activities. Today insecurity persists in the form of roaming gangs in rural areas of the Timbuktu, Gao, and Kidal regions that raid cattle and loot food stores unhampered by an adequate military presence. Farmers have also been concerned in some areas about returning to fields where there may be unexploded mines (Moseley Reference Moseley2013b).
The Position of Azawad and Key Economic Resources in Mali
In 2014 an Africare- and USAID-supported NGO called the Timbuktu Food Security Program operating in the Niafunké and Goundam Cercles reported that some village producer groups were able to continue farming in irrigated rice perimeters during the period of rebel control of the area (and some even experienced record harvests). Nevertheless, those practicing recession agriculture in the Lake Télé area (near Goundam) were less successful because of restrictions imposed by occupiers. Furthermore, “the limitations imposed on women by the occupiers had a severe negative effect on the ability of women’s groups to produce vegetables in community gardens and to be active in the economy” (Short & Sidibe Reference Short and Sidibe2014:3). The insecurity of 2012–2013 also inhibited Fulani pastoralists from leaving the Inner Niger Delta and kept Tuareg herders in the drylands to the north because of rising ethnic tensions and traditional Fulani control of the Delta. The more limited movement of livestock led to poorer animal nutrition and degradation of rangeland conditions (Kimenyi et al. Reference Kimenyi2014). While farmer–herder conflicts are not new to the area (Moseley et al. Reference Moseley, Earl, Diarra and Orange2002), these tensions were likely exacerbated by limited mobility of pastoralists who were pent up in farming areas during the rainy season. It was also reported that livestock prices plummeted in the early stages of the rebel occupation as people sold off animals to minimize losses. Livestock values then climbed dramatically due to limited supply and the diets of rebel occupying forces, who largely consumed milk and meat (Kimenyi et al. Reference Kimenyi2014). The overall impact for local herders who had sold off livestock at cheap prices was negative. The broader population also experienced more limited access to meat and milk when prices surged after the sell-off. Finally, Oxfam surveys indicated that the departure of Arab traders from several areas in the north (during and after the conflict) reduced the availability, and raised prices, of key consumer goods in local markets, creating further hardship for the local population (Allegrozzi & Ford Reference Allegrozzi and Ford2013).
Changing Livelihoods in Southern Mali
During the 2012–2013 period of insecurity, governance in southern Mali was hobbled due to reductions in foreign development assistance and the shifting priorities of Captain Amadou Sanogo’s military junta. While there were no rebel or counterinsurgency activities to the south and southwest of Mopti, the inhabitants of southern Mali experienced reduced salaries for government and project staff (who in turn support large numbers of people), as well as a weakened economy in the capital city of Bamako and in provincial towns.
Agricultural production, however, remained robust and maintained its strategic importance for southern rural households during this period. Remarkably, the 2012 cotton harvest in southern Mali was up 83 percent over the previous year’s harvest (to 445,000 metric tons), with a further 23 percent increase in 2013 (to 555,000 metric tons) (Agritrade 2012). In the postcolonial period, as Keeley and Scoones (Reference Keeley and Scoones2003) have described, Mali’s relatively undiversified economy had been heavily reliant on cotton exports, making this a politically important economic sector. The government had long stated that “coton est le clé du développement” (cotton is the key to development) (Jeune Afrique Economie 1998). In 2012, while the government cotton company, Compagnie Malienne pour le Développement des Textiles (CMDT), was still undergoing privatization (with the involvement of the Chinese company Yue Mei), it seemed to be holding even greater sway in the Malian political economy than it had historically. After 2012, generous government support for agricultural inputs (Reuters 2015), as well as strong rainfall (Wroblewska Reference Wroblewska2015), were likely to have boosted production. It was also important that the CMDT had some autonomy to operate even when the rest of the government was in disarray. It is also possible that the sagging Bamako economy in 2012–2013 drove casual labor back into the rural areas. The CMDT is now aiming to produce eight hundred thousand tons of seed cotton by 2018 (Reuters 2015), further solidifying the dominance of this crop in farming systems of southern Mali.
The other economic activity that saw a huge uptick in southern Mali in 2012 was artisanal gold mining. Gold mining is not new to many areas of West Africa and in fact stretches back over a millennium. As is well known, a series of West African empires thrived from the ninth to the fifteenth centuries because they controlled the trans-Saharan trade, with gold and slaves flowing north in exchange for salt, cloth, and textiles coming south. The Ghana, Mali, and Songhay Empires rose and fell based on their ability to control where gold was mined in contemporary Ghana, Guinea, Burkina Faso, and Mali. The gold mines of these ancient West African empires were eventually tapped out and largely fell dormant for several centuries. But large-scale gold mining returned to the region in the 1980s when new mining methods such as cyanide leaching made such operations economically viable again. Regional gold production has surged in recent years and is now a leading source of income for Burkina Faso, Mali, and Ghana. Most large-scale gold mining in the region is executed and managed by international mining companies of Chinese, South African, American, Australian, or Canadian origin (see map for mine locations). Unfortunately, these operations yield few tangible gains for ordinary citizens, who see little benefit from the large-scale mines run by international companies that repatriate most of their profits (Maconachie & Hilson Reference Maconachie and Hilson2011).
Small-scale artisanal mining also returned to the region during this period. I first visited such mines near Yanfolila in southwestern Mali in the late 1980s. At that time I viewed a dizzying landscape pockmarked by deep well-like holes hand dug by individual miners. Not far from this scene was a large open-air market where traders bought the gold from the miners and miners then spent their newly earned cash on the wide variety of products (and services) being offered, from basic necessities to liquor and prostitution. What has changed in the last ten to fifteen years is the introduction of new, relatively inexpensive technology such as metal detectors, excavators, sifters, and crushers, which make artisanal mining more efficient (Diallo Reference Diallo2014). In addition, since the global financial collapse of 2007, artisanal mining has intensified because of the relatively high international price of gold. Mali’s period of instability provided further impetus because rural households needed money and government supervision of the activity was even more minimal than in the past. Recent research suggests that artisanal gold mining was also the main source of revenue for some units of local government. According to Teschner (Reference Teschner2014:140), “as the state withdrew financial support from the rural [Yallankoro-Soloba] commune government and social services, local government officials, medical services, educational institutions and local populations were able to capitalize on these ASM [artisanal and small-scale mining]-generated revenues.”
One could contend that this highly decentralized form of small-scale mining is better for the residents of Mali compared to the large-scale mines. The problem is that artisanal mining is often crippling to small-scale agriculture. It is also bad for the environment, conducive to health risks, and unsustainable (Fayinke & Sissoko Reference Fayinke and Sissoko2013). While I was visiting villages in southern Mali in June 2014, it became clear to me that small-scale farming in this area faces unprecedented labor shortages due to artisanal gold mining. Male heads of household and senior women frequently reported that one or more of their sons had left the family for over a year to engage in artisanal gold mining.
Young men leaving their villages to work in other areas is not a new phenomenon (Becker Reference Becker1996). Historically they would leave to farm cotton, peanuts, or other crops in areas where the prices or conditions were better. However, in such cases they would still farm food crops alongside these cash crops, ensuring that national- or regional-level food production remained robust. Alternatively, they would leave to work in the city during the unproductive dry season, returning home to work in the fields when the rains began. The new labor exodus for the artisanal gold mines seems more intense, given the lure of wealth driven by periodically high international gold prices. The young men are also not returning home during the rainy season to work on the farm. Their complete exodus from agriculture has important implications for food production at the national scale in Mali and more generally in the region.
The question that needs to be asked is: what will happen to these young men when the gold runs out or international prices drop back to a point where the activity is no longer viable? Will they return to farming or become a new proletariat chasing a limited number of wage-paying jobs? The environmental and health consequences of artisanal gold mining are also not insignificant. Large tracks of land are dug up and rendered unusable for pasture, farming, or forestry. Certain stretches of the Niger River (near Kangaba, for example) and its tributaries have also been greatly disturbed following artisanal mining activities. Mercury poisoning among miners is not uncommon and the number of mining accidents is also large and growing (Hilson Reference Hilson2006). Another health problem is the elevated levels of HIV/AIDS in some artisanal mining areas where large number of single men frequent sex workers.
I am generally skeptical of the notion of the “resource curse,” the idea that the abundance of a valuable resource may lead to corruption and the simplification of a national economy (see Collier Reference Collier2007), because of this framework’s tendency to obfuscate political factors. That said, artisanal gold mining may represent a new form of this problem because it economically outbids farming in the short term and leads to the rapid exodus of labor from the agricultural sector. These artisanal miners may return to agricultural work, but they also may not do so after experiencing a sustained break from farming. Such an exodus may disable what has historically been a vibrant smallholder farming sector in southern Mali.
The Return of Donors to Mali
Since the return to quasi-normalcy in late 2013 after the election of Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, many donors have returned to Mali. There are three facets of the post-2013 donor landscape in Mali that merit discussion.
First, while the 2012 coup d’état was ostensibly driven by the army’s anger over their lack of resources, the coup did receive some popular support from a general public, which was frustrated by high levels of corruption within the government (Whitehouse Reference Whitehouse2012). Given this popular frustration with the previous government, it is surprising that anticorruption has not been a more dominant theme for the current government and donor community. Donors consistently turned a blind eye to corruption during the ATT administration, but one would hope that they have learned not to do so again. Perhaps a positive development was the May 2014 controversy over the purchase of a Malian presidential jet, which raised concerns in the donor community that transparency and accountability were not being prioritized in the way they had hoped (Smith Reference Smith2014).
Second, donor assistance programs in northern Mali are still rather limited due to political insecurity. To the extent that donors are active in these areas, much of the aid is increasingly framed and packaged in terms of counterterrorism. In many ways, this emphasis has echoes of similarly packaged programs in this region before the coup (Moseley Reference Moseley2009). From the heavily fortified Hotel Amitié in Bamako (headquarters of the U.N. Peacekeeping Operation) to the schools outside of Gao that were built by soldiers, the reality is that for many Malians, experiences with outsiders involve interactions with people dressed in army fatigues.
Third, development aid in the southern part of the country now seems to be increasingly focused on agriculture and related enterprises (IMF 2013). Much of this work might be characterized as part of a New Green Revolution for Africa (GR4A), a strategy that seeks to enhance food production in the southern part of the country by introducing improved seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides. Today Mali is something of a poster child for this approach: a “Portfolio 1” country for the Alliance for a Green Revolution for Africa (AGRA), a “focus country” for USAID’s Feed the Future program, a recipient of the World Bank’s “Fostering Agricultural Productivity Project,” and currently under review as a member country in the G8 New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition. These donors are increasingly working with a variety of private sector actors to provide agricultural inputs and to purchase the outputs of farmers. This business-oriented approach to development, in which donors and government actors discuss agriculture in terms of “value chains,” is relatively new to the region (Moseley et al. Reference Moseley, Schnurr and Kerr2015). The problem is that we don’t know how this intensive push for the commercialization of food crops (well beyond the more longstanding commercial focus on cotton) will impact household food security and nutrition.
Conclusion
As stated at the outset, the 2012–2013 period in Mali and the way in which the country muddled through the crisis have left almost two distinct nations. The north remains a militarized zone in which the few outside donors that remain focus their attention on antiterrorism. While there is good work taking place in this part of the country, the rationale for funding these efforts is often the need to address the root causes of terrorism (Miles Reference Miles2012). The south, in contrast, has increasingly become a zone of free-market intervention, a tendency that was amplified during the period of insecurity when rural Malians needed to scramble to find resources through channels other than the state. This has included a push for more cotton production and the proliferation of artisanal gold mining, both of which are questionable in terms of environmental sustainability. The donor community has also been promoting private-sector actors as key players in its drive to build value chains and commercialize food crop production. The result is a free-market, resource-frontier (or zone of unbridled resource extraction) atmosphere in the southern part of the country.
This conclusion both complements and diverges from one arrived at by Mann (2015), as discussed in the introduction. What we see in the post-2013 period is that the façade of state authority has crumbled dramatically, exposing a weak and tenuous government with limited power and insufficient standing to maintain social order. While NGOs have partially stepped into this vacuum, their power is also constrained because of insecurity in the country and insufficient resources to fill the void. As such, NGOs, in another evolution of “nongovernmentality” (to use Mann’s term), have entered into strategic alliances with military units (both foreign and domestic) in the north and with the private sector in the south. This strange trio of military forces, the private sector, and NGOs (which are arguably an embodiment of secular ethics) is eerily reminiscent of the early colonial era in West Africa—a time when militaries, private companies, and missionaries were key actors. Also active on the Sahelian landscape of the late 1800s (as today) were jihadists of various stripes seeking converts and engaging in anticolonial struggles, such as Fulanis in central Mali (Bruijn & Dijk 2003) or Samori Toure in southern Mali (Peterson Reference Peterson2008). These late nineteenth-century jihadists have mixed legacies, sometimes celebrated as resistance leaders yet also feared and loathed by large segments of the local population for their religious intolerance, brutal tactics, and capture of resources. While they eventually were subdued by a combination of French colonial armies and local resistance, it is unclear what will happen today.
The current situation in Mali also suggests that the need for state authority may differ in the northern and southern regions of the country. In the north the state needs to arbitrate between different groups (e.g., the Tuareg and the Songhay), enforce the peace, and provide public goods such as education and health care. The Malian state has arguably failed in all of these areas, although with the assistance of NGOs it does provide minimal health care services and education when security conditions permit. While NGO service provision does allow the state to focus on other tasks (Whitehouse Reference Whitehouse2015), the Malian government has failed in this narrower mandate as it is not perceived as a fair arbiter by the Tuareg. Furthermore, corruption and poor discipline have prohibited the military from delivering public safety (something also observed in northern Nigeria in the fight against Boko Haram). With the recent signing of a peace agreement between separatist factions in the north and the Government of Mali (BBC 2015b), serious reform of the military, and not just the provision of additional training and armaments, must be a major priority if public safety commitments are to be fulfilled.
In contrast to the situation in the north, different ethnic groups have long coexisted peacefully in the southern part of Mali and traditional structures successfully arbitrate most disputes (see, e.g., Wilson-Fall Reference Wilson-Fall and Zartman2000). While the existential threat of the state’s policing function may be important for public safety in the south, it is largely absent from the lives of everyday rural Malians except for corrupt rent seeking among police and military officers along transportation arteries. In the south, the role of the Malian government lies mainly in the realm of public service provision (education and health care) as well as in the policing of resource management and extraction. As in the north, the state has been able to provide minimal public services with the help of donors and NGOs (for which funding contracted significantly in the 2012–2013 period), but its track record in managing natural resources is less than stellar. For example, relations between the public and the state forestry service have long been adversarial (Benjaminsen Reference Benjaminsen1997), government rents from mining appear to be of little benefit to the public (Maconachie & Hilson Reference Maconachie and Hilson2011), and more attention is devoted to cotton revenue than to sustainable soils management (Moseley Reference Moseley, Moseley and Gray2008). Given this poor track record, it could be argued that the contraction of the state in southern Mali during 2012–2013 was actually a mixed blessing. Certainly it hurt the south because NGOs and donors lacked a legitimate state partner with which to engage and donor support for public goods provision therefore declined. However, the impact on resource management is less clear. Since it is not certain that the state is sufficiently uncorrupt to manage natural resources with an eye to long-term sustainability, it could be argued, in fact, that a more limited central state is better than a robust but corrupt central state. Nevertheless, while this is a tempting conclusion, cleaner governance really must be the way forward. And in the wake of the March 2015 terrorist shooting in a Bamako night club (Radio France Internationale 2015), as well as attacks along Mali’s border with Côte d’Ivoire (Coulibaly Reference Coulibaly2015), it has become clear that the need for more robust policing in the south may be apparent in the future, suggesting some convergence between the needs of the northern and southern parts of the country.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful for feedback on this article from three anonymous reviewers, Barbara Hoffman, and ASR editor Elliot Fratkin. This article also benefited from discussion at a roundtable titled the “Future of Mali” at the 2013 annual meeting of the African Studies Association. I also wish to thank Macalester College, whose Wallace International Travel Grant allowed me to travel to Mali in the summer of 2014 to conduct fieldwork for this article.
