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The dictatorial President Moussa Traore had run the country dismally for 23 years. "I made a coup," says Toure, "but sometimes you have to give a quick kick to democracy." Rare among Africa's military bosses, A.T.T. had the courage to return his country to civilian control. "I watched officers my age in other countries take over," he says. "These men came in to save their countries, then stayed 20 years. But when a country is well managed, the constitution is respected, no captain can come out of his barracks. The vaccination against a coup is good government."
Mali seems to have that under the guiding hand of Konare, its first ever popularly elected President. The 52-year-old former teacher and history Ph.D. once taught A.T.T. and served in the regime A.T.T. ousted, resigning in 1980 to join a clandestine democracy movement. "He understands human capital," says Tore Rose, head of the U.N. Development Program in Mali. "It's not the people themselves, but how they work with one another, and with groups and institutions."
The history of Mali is marked by the trust people have in these dealings, institutionalized in the traditional "palaver tree" approach to decision making, where village elders consult under a tree until a consensus is reached. Since its creation in 1993, Mali's Decentralization Mission has been educating the public about a modern democratic version of such local control. The country is divided into eight regions, 50 districts, 701 communes and thousands of villages. District chiefs are no longer appointed from the capital of Bamako but elected locally. Later this year, the communes will hold elections. "Reinforcing democracy," says President Konare, "means devolution of power to the communities."
Although CMDT, the Malian Company for the Development of Textiles, which monopolizes the country's cotton production, is state owned, it is decentralizing, transforming a money-losing dinosaur into an engine for local development. Putting cotton plants into rotation with cereal crops, CMDT not only grows higher-quality cotton but also keeps farmers producing less pricey but essential maize, millet, sorghum and rice. Says Chaka Berte, a CMDT management director: "The farmers are taking their cotton money and diversifying. Good for them. Good for Mali."
The profits have helped transform N'Tjinina, a hamlet of 49 families, 1,263 people, deep in the countryside southeast of Bamako. There are still no paved roads, no electricity, no running water anywhere in the district. But with help from its CMDT-sponsored village association, which bought insecticides, oxen and a weighing machine, the families regularly harvest bumper crops. Mali's Producers' Union, a rarity in Africa, negotiates with CMDT to set prices for the farmer, and the village association receives block earnings. Extra profits are pooled, and so far N'Tjinina has bought two water pumps and built three primary schools, paying the three teachers' salaries too. "Before, our children left the village," says N'Tjikoua Sangare. "Now they are staying."