Modibo Keïta

Keïta was born and raised in Bamako, then the capital of French Sudan, and began a career as a teacher in 1936 under French colonial rule. ¹ The English article records that his family were Malian Muslims who claimed direct descent from the Keita dynasty, the founders of the medieval Mali Empire — a statement about his family, which the record keeps distinct from any attestation about the man himself. ¹ The Arabic article says the same of his family. ²

In 1945 Keïta co-founded the Sudanese Union with Mamadou Konaté, which the following year joined the African Democratic Rally to form the US-RDA. ¹ His political prominence grew through the 1950s, and in 1959 he became prime minister of the Mali Federation, the short-lived federation of Mali and Senegal. ¹

When the federation collapsed in 1960 and Mali became an independent state, Keïta became the new country's inaugural president. ¹ He established the US-RDA as the only official party and implemented socialist policies based on extensive nationalisation, an African socialism whose synthesis the article describes as drawing on leftist ideas, national traditions and Islamism. ¹ In foreign affairs he supported the Non-Aligned Movement, played an important role in drafting the charter of the Organisation of African Unity, and negotiated the 1963 Bamako Accords that ended the Sand War between Morocco and Algeria, which the Arabic article also recounts. ^{1 2}

Dissatisfaction with economic decline and repression grew in the late 1960s, and on 19 November 1968 Moussa Traoré overthrew him in a coup d'état. ¹ Traoré sent him to prison, where he died, still a prisoner, on 16 May 1977; the article's infobox gives the place as Bamako. ^{1 3}

• The defined source entities cited above, recorded in data/source/.