Mali didn’t claim their country TLD for a long time, some dude named Johannes Zuurbier decided to just hand out domains to anyone who wanted them, for gratis unless your traffic was super high (and even then asked to only cover the traffic costs). He did this in his spare time for the community. This all further appealed to Marxist-Lenists.

Now it’s managed by the government of Mali, they still give them out for gratis/very cheap.