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
History of Sudan 19th century, and established a province [[Equatoria]] in southern Sudan to further this aim, it was unable to establish effective control over the area. In the later years of the Turkiyah, [[United Kingdom|British]] missionaries traveled from modern-day [[Kenya]] into the Sudan to convert the local tribes to Christianity. [[File:1875 slave merchant Khartoum.jpeg|thumb|200px|A typical slave merchant of Khartoum, 1875]] In 1881, a religious leader named [[Muhammad Ahmad]] proclaimed himself the [[Mahdi]] ("guided one") and began a war to unify the tribes in western and central Sudan. His followers took the name "[[Ansar (Sudan)|Ansar]]s" ("followers") which they continue to use today, in