Cercle (French colonial) would still fall under the Indigénat. The "Lamine Guèye law" of 7 April 1946 formally extended citizenship across the empire, indigènes included. Third, the law of 20 September 1947 removed the two tier court system and mandated equal access to public employment. Reduced to a political subdivision roughly equivalent to a French department and stripped of the personal power of the Cercle Commander system, the Cercle name retained enough imperial connotations to be changed by most nations upon independence to Departments or Sub-Prefectures. Mali is the only nation in Sub-Saharan Africa to retain the name Cercle for its second level
Greeks in South Sudan which prompted imperialist Belgian and French missions into Southern Sudan. It may have been in this context that in 1895 a Greek merchant by the name of Grigoris Apostolidis became active in Sambi on the While Nile. He originated from Imvros and after a few years moved on to open a shop Yirol. He got married to a local woman and had two sons with her. Soon after the defeat of the Mahdist regime and the subsequent Fashoda incident in 1898, the British-dominated colonial regime started establishing control in Southern Sudan. At the same time, Greek merchants once again followed