As the first President of the independent Republic of Mali, Modibo Keita was a charismatic leader, very influential on the international arena. He had non-alignment as a principle and was a staunch pan-Africanist, and shared that conviction with the great nationalists of his time, like Mouammar Gaddafi from Libya, Gamal Abdel Nasser from Egypt, Kwame Nkrumah from Ghana, Ahmed Ben Bella from Algeria, and Nehru from India. He died in detention at the camp of the Djikoroni Para in Bamako on 16 May 1977, after a coup d’état led by Moussa Traoré.