Sahara’s southern empire belt became Africa’s eighth-largest state
Mali, a landlocked West African republic of 1,240,192 square kilometres, ranks eighth-largest in Africa and twenty-third worldwide. Its north stabs deep into the Sahara while most people live in southern Sudanian savanna along the Niger and Senegal rivers, where medieval empires once grew rich on gold and salt caravans.
Seven neighbours ring the country, from Algeria in the north to Guinea and Senegal in the west, and Bamako serves as capital. About 25.2 million people live there, nearly half of them younger than 15 in 2024. French lost official status in 2022 to 13 African languages, and Bambara is the mother tongue of most citizens. Gold supplies roughly four-fifths of exports, cotton adds more, yet Mali stays among the poorest nations.
Saharan rock art implies people lived in the north by 10,000 BC, and pottery from Ounjougou, around 9,400 BC, may be an independent invention. Dia flourished near 600 BC and Djenné-Djenno lasted from about 300 BC to 900 AD. The Soninke-led Ghana Empire fell to the Almoravids in 1078; Sundiata Keita’s win at Kirina in 1235 toppled the Sosso and launched the Mali Empire, whose rulers took the title mansa. Around 1300 it was Africa’s richest state under Mansa Musa, with Timbuktu famous for scholarship, until Songhai absorbed it in 1468 and a Moroccan force under Judar Pasha broke Songhai in 1591.
The country’s name first meant hippopotamus, the Keita clan emblem, and later the place where the king lives. A drought and locust crisis in 1738–1756 reportedly killed half of Timbuktu. France held most of the area by 1905 as French Sudan and crushed a 1915 revolt, burning over 100 villages.
Pairing with Senegal, the territory won independence on 20 June 1960; Senegal pulled out that August, and the Republic of Mali dates from 22 September. Modibo Keïta built a socialist one-party state. A 1991 coup brought multiparty rule, but Tuareg rebels declared Azawad in April 2012 and France launched Operation Serval in January 2013. Assimi Goïta seized power in coups in 2020 and 2021, and parties were dissolved in 2025.
Source: Mali
