The Worth of Peanuts: Soviet Trade with Mali as Development Politics

In the 1960s the USSR often sent brand-new tractors to newly-independent Mali The government of Mali paid peanuts for them – literally: all payments were made in actual Malian peanuts. Why?

This paper analyses trade exchanges between the Soviet Union and Mali during the first half of the 1960s, exploring the principles that guided trade and assessing its impact on both countries’ economies and finances. In the Nikita Khrushchev era, at the height of the USSR’s engagement in the Third World, Moscow framed trade with newly independent countries in Asia and Africa as a tool of economic development. The idea was that ‘fraternal’ trade with the socialist bloc would replace ‘exploitative’ trade with the former colonial masters, allowing developing countries to obtain the goods and commodities they needed at fairer conditions. The objective of this paper is to demonstrate that the decision to trade with countries such Mali was entirely political and not motivated by the USSR’s necessity to seek integration in the world economy or to obtain raw materials.

In Moscow, economic decisions were subordinated to political considerations. In West Africa, the Soviet Union competed against the United States and Western Europe for the attention of the local governments and, ultimately, for the possibility of shaping the path to modernization that newly independent countries took. Likewise, Mali embraced trade with the USSR because of politics, regional as well as international. Mali’s new leaders saw an alternative to trade with France (and its allies in West Africa) as essential to the push for economic independence.

The politics of development dominated the agenda both in Moscow and Bamako. Profitability and financial sustainability were secondary aspects in a clash between different visions of economic development and modernization, which were at the heart of the Cold War in the Third World.