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MALI’S MISSION CIVILISATRICE 139forced them to settle down in the provisional refugee camps. Some of themprobably remembered the days when the Government helped the sedentarisednomads to grow vegetables, which they could sell to stay alive. Cynicallyenough, demands made in the 1970s by some spokesmen of the community tobe equipped with farming material were not at all heeded. 63The revenues: Cattle and taxAlthough I have tried to make clear that ‘the civilisation of the backward nomadpopulation’ was a goal in itself, the policies in the North were partly gearedtoward the increase in state revenues form livestock. The main option for theGovernment to command revenues from livestock production was control overcattle export, which was then still in the hands of private merchants. Thesebought cattle from their producers and then hired professional herdsman todrive them on foot to the neighbouring countries. Formally, export taxes had tobe paid, but these could be easily circumvented by lack of border control. Thischanged in 1962 with the creation of the Malian Franc. The new currency hadthe same value as the CFA Franc, but currency exchange was only possible atthe Malian National Bank, which forced the merchants to declare their imports,exports, and revenues. The creation of the Malian Franc struck a major blow tothe merchant community, but not to the Kel Adagh who exported most of theirlivestock themselves to the Algerian Touat, exchanging their animals directlyfor consumer goods on the local market. This could not be prevented by thenew monetary measures. Another measure taken by the Government to augmentstate revenues from animal husbandry was the heavy increase of the cattle tax in1962. The increase in cattle tax was announced ex ante in the national newspaperL’Essor on 20 February 1962.Cattle are without doubt one of the greatest riches of our nation (...) its value incapital amounts probably to the sum of 50 billion francs. Yet, the returns on cattletax were thus far ludicrous. The reasons for this insufficiency in returns are known.Whatever the case, we should distance ourselves from former mistakes such assimply retaking the numbers from last year, without taking into account the intermediaryincrease, and to tax the big cattle owners for an infinitely small part of theirherds, while the small and average pastoralists find themselves taxed on the totalityof their production (...) in reality, the percentage of taxation varies between 1.5%and 3% of the market value of the animals. The effort demanded from pastoralists isthus smaller than that of other categories of contributors and they can, without muchinconvenience, contribute about 3% of their riches in tax, and sometimes even less. 646364Ibid.: 28-29.“M. Attaher Maiga, ministre des finances expose les grandes lignes du budget national”,L’Essor, 20/02/1962.