The Parisian Experience
Thanks to his activism during his studies in France between 1947 and 1957 Samir Amin had good connections in the communist and anti-colonialist spheres, and these turned out to be very useful.
He was indeed a very active militant in the l’Union Nationale des Etudiants de France (UNEF) (National Union of French Students), in the Communist Party, and also in a number of anti-colonialist student movements which were well represented in Paris at this time, such as those for Arab states, including Egypt, and those for Asian or African countries, which counted among their members people from Vietnam, North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa.In this context, he met many of those who were to become the first political leaders of post-independence French-speaking sub-Saharan Africa, as well as young Middle Eastern men, such as Syrians and Iraqis, who were very numerous in France at the time.
While in Paris, he worked for 6 months for the Service des Etudes Economiques et Financieres (SEEF) (Department of Economic and Financial Studies). This experience was very instructive for him since it was then that he really learnt in concrete terms about macroeconomy in a context of planning. But he did not want to stay in Paris and wished to join a country where he could continue holding a politically useful job while respecting his deeply-rooted convictions. Therefore, after SEEF, which was his second practical experience and very different from his previous post in Egypt, he opted for Mali where he lived from 1960 to 1963.
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