BAMAKO, Mali — Elhadj Maiga is a Qaddafi recruiter and a proud one at that, scrambling to assemble a pipeline of young men from Mali to go and fight for The Great Leader.

At this stage, without cash for guns or transport, Mr. Maiga’s group of about 200 young men is more of a fan club than a militia. But like other pro-Qaddafi groups that have sprung up here since the rebellion in Libya began, what it lacks in logistics it makes up in loyalty.

“We’re all ready to die for him,” Mr. Maiga said. “He’s done so much for us, after all.”

Just look at Mr. Maiga’s life: he prays at a mosque in Bamako, Mali’s capital, that Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi built; he watches television on the Malian national network that Colonel Qaddafi set up in the 1980s; and he admires with a feeling nothing short of awe La Cité Administrative Muammar el-Qaddafi, the gleaming new $100 million government complex that Colonel Qaddafi is helping pay for and that bears his name — even though it is for Mali’s government, not Libya’s.

Mali, a desperately poor country near Libya, is a case in point of the allegiance Colonel Qaddafi has bought in many parts of the continent. He has tapped Libya’s vast oil reserves to liberally sprinkle billions of dollars around sub-Saharan Africa, playing all sides and investing in almost anything — governments, rebel groups, luxury hotels, Islamic organizations, rubber factories, rice paddies, diamond mines, supermarkets and the countless OiLibya gas stations.