The handover ceremony in Bamako on Monday, October 12, was meant to showcase a nation taking care of its own. Mossa Ag Attaher, the minister responsible for Malians abroad and African integration, presided over the distribution of funds to 90 socio-economic reintegration projects led by returning migrants. The total envelope: 121 million CFA francs, an average of between 1 and 2 million per project. Out of 206 applications, only 90 made the cut. The state foots the entire bill through its Special Investment Budget. The sectors are the usual suspects—livestock, market gardening, agriculture, trade, crafts, and services—with beneficiaries spread across Bamako and a handful of localities including Gao, Timbuktu, Nioro, Kita, and San.
On paper, it is a clean, national, sovereign announcement. It fits neatly into the current rhetoric of celebrating the diaspora and turning return into opportunity. The minister called for “rigor,” “exemplary management,” and promised “territorial follow-up.” He even noted special attention for deportees from Saudi Arabia, a group often off the radar of the International Organization for Migration.
Yet behind the round figures and the oversized cheque photos, several grey areas linger—and they are fueling a growing public debate about what comes next.
A selection process that raises more questions than it answers
No public criteria grid has been released. It remains unclear on what basis the 90 files were chosen from 206. Who sat on the selection committee? What weighed more heavily: real economic viability, level of vulnerability, how long ago the person returned, the presence of a serious business plan, or other, less avowable considerations? Previous rounds—75 projects for 100 million in 2025, 40 projects run by civil society organizations in 2024—also failed to publish detailed criteria. The opacity of the process leaves the door open to suspicions of favoritism, clientelism, or selection by network rather than by merit and potential impact.
No names, no details
The list of the 90 beneficiaries has not been made public. Neither have the exact amounts allocated to each, nor the precise nature of the projects selected. In a country where trust in the management of public funds remains fragile, this lack of transparency is problematic. How can anyone verify that the money actually reaches the intended recipients and does not dissolve along the way? How can anyone be sure that relatives, political activists, or intermediaries are not capturing a slice of the envelope?
Promised monitoring, never demonstrated
The minister vows “territorial follow-up” to guarantee the sustainability of the activities. Yet no public evaluation of previous editions has ever been released. How many projects from 2024 and 2025 are still running today? How many actually generate steady income and create jobs? How many simply vanished once the subsidy ran out? Without performance indicators, independent audits, and published results, the scheme looks more like a series of one-off operations than an evaluable public policy.
The scale of the problem
Since 2022, the MPRR-SSA program alone—funded mainly by the European Union and implemented with the IOM—has facilitated the return of more than 27,800 Malians and supported over 14,000 reintegration projects. Against those volumes, 90 projects for 121 million CFA francs look like a drop in the ocean. The national effort is real, but it remains symbolic. And that is precisely where the risk of a gap between communication and reality is greatest: presenting a limited operation as a “concrete commitment” and a “lever for local development” can create an illusion of massive action while the vast majority of returning migrants remain without structured support.
What is left unsaid
The program is financed through the Special Investment Budget. In a tight budgetary context, it is unclear exactly where the 121 million comes from, or whether it comes at the expense of other priorities. Nor is it known whether the beneficiaries are only recent returnees or include people who came back years ago. Finally, nothing indicates how the scheme dovetails—or fails to dovetail—with existing mechanisms run by the IOM and technical partners, which could lead to duplication or, conversely, gaps in coverage.
The stated intention—helping compatriots rebuild an economic activity after an often traumatic migration journey—is legitimate. But a public policy worthy of the name is judged by its transparency, its traceability, and its measurable results. For now, the system remains largely a black box: applications received, projects selected, funds disbursed… and silence on what happens next.
Until the list of beneficiaries, the selection criteria, and the impact assessments of previous years are made public, doubt will remain permissible. And in an area as sensitive as the reintegration of returning migrants, doubt is never neutral.