PH
Salif Keita, the Malian music icon, has been named as a “special advisor” to the head of the country’s military junta.
The Afropop singer-songwriter is mentioned as one of five such advisors to Colonel Assimi Goita, who deposed elected president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita in 2020, in a decree published late Monday and dated August 11.
The decree does not give details about his new role.
Keita, 73, has been a supporter of the junta, endorsing its narrative of national sovereignty and calling for the departure of UN peacekeeping troops from Mali.
Last week he announced he was stepping down from a junta-appointed legislature.
He gave no reason for the move and declared in his letter of resignation that he would always remain “the undisputed friend of my country’s soldiers.”
The landlocked Sahel country has been mired in a security crisis since 2012, when a regional insurgency broke out in the north of the country.
The revolt was fanned by jihadists who in 2015 advanced into the centre of the country and neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger.
