Profile - Mali

I INTRODUCTION
Mali (country), republic in northwestern Africa, bounded on the northeast by Algeria, on the east by Niger, on the south by Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, and Guinea, and on the west by Senegal and Mauritania. The area of the country is 1,240,192 sq km (478,841 sq mi).

II LAND AND RESOURCES
Most of Mali consists of low plains broken occasionally by rocky hills. In the southeast the Hombori Mountains rise to 1,155 m (3,789 ft), and in the southwest the Bambouk and Mandingue mountains are separated by an area of sandy lowlands north and northwest of the Niger River, which cuts an arc across Mali. The northern third of the country lies within the Sahara. In the west is a part of the Sahel, a semiarid transitional zone between areas of savanna and the Sahara desert.

A Climate The climate of the parts of Mali not in the Sahara is hot and dry with average temperatures ranging from about 24° to 32° C (about 75° to 90° F) in the south and higher in the north. Annual rainfall declines from about 1,400 mm (about 55 in) in the south to some 1,120 mm (some 44 in) at Bamako and less than 127 mm (less than 5 in) in the north. Droughts periodically cause considerable hardship.

B Natural Resources Mali is a predominantly agricultural country. The most valuable resource is the Niger River, which abounds in fish; its waters are used for irrigation. Mineral resources include gold, salt, phosphate rock, iron ore, diamonds, and uranium.

C Plants and Animals
In the southern Saharan zone of Mali are found mimosa and gum trees; in the central region, thorny plants; and in the south, kapok, baobab, and shea trees. Animals include cheetah, oryx, gazelle, giraffe, warthog, lion, leopard, antelope, and jackal.

III POPULATION
Almost all the population of Mali is African; the major groups are the Bambara, Fulani, Tuareg, Soninke, Sénouf, Songhai, and Malinké. Nomadic Tuaregs and other Berbers roam the Sahel and parts of the Sahara. Islam is the religion of about 80 percent of the population, and about 18 percent of the people follow traditional beliefs; less than 2 percent are Christians. French is the official language but African languages, such as Bambara and Songhai, are widely spoken.

A Population Characteristics According to the 1987 census, Mali had 7,696,348 people. The 1998 estimated population was 10,108,569, giving the country an overall population density of 8 persons per sq km (21 per sq mi).

B Political Divisions and Principal Cities
Mali is divided into eight administrative regions plus the capital district of Bamako. The larger towns have elected mayors and council members. The main cities are Bamako (population, 1993 estimate, 880,000), the capital; Ségou (85,000); Mopti (75,000); Sikasso (73,050); Kayes (50,000); and Gao (40,000). Ségou and Mopti are important fishing centers.

C Education Only 37 percent of Malian children of primary school age attended schools in 1996. Only 39 percent of men and 23 percent of women in Mali are literate. Approximately 6,700 students attended institutions of higher education in Mali in the early 1990s. Bamako has schools of administration, medicine, and engineering.

IV ECONOMY
Mali is one of the world’s poorest countries. The economy’s largest sector is agriculture, and crops depend almost entirely on irrigation or flooding from the Niger River and its tributaries. Small industrial enterprises consist primarily of cotton ginning and food processing. Fish from the Niger are important to the diet of the people living along the river. The fishing industry produces a surplus, which is dried and smoked for export. Mineral resources are being surveyed, and gold, salt, marble, phosphate rock, and diamonds have been exploited. Iron ore and uranium are expected to be extracted in the future. Other minerals that have been detected include petroleum, bauxite, manganese, zinc, copper, and lithium. In 1997 Mali produced 325 million kilowatt-hours of electricity; much of that was generated in hydroelectric installations. The government’s budget for 1992 included $376 million in revenue and $697 million in expenditure.

A Agriculture
The cultivation of food crops occupies 86 percent of the economically active population of Mali. The main crops are millet, rice, sorghum, corn, and sugarcane. Livestock raising is of major importance; in 1998 the livestock population included 5.7 million cattle, 5.9 million sheep, 8.5 million goats, and 24 million poultry. Some 2.2 million metric tons of cereals and 498,000 tons of cotton were harvested in 1998. Prolonged drought in the mid-1980s decimated livestock herds and food production.

B Currency, Banking, and Trade The monetary unit is the CFA franc, consisting of 100 centimes (584 francs equal U.S.$1; 1997 average). The Central Bank of the West African States assumes Mali’s central banking functions.

Most foreign trade operations are in the hands of the state. Principal exports include gold, cotton, livestock, processed foodstuffs, and mangoes. The value of exports in 1996 was $439 million. Imports, typically petroleum products, motor vehicles, food products, machinery, and chemicals, amounted to $764 million. Chief purchasers of Mali’s exports are Belgium, China, Spain, France, Côte d’Ivoire, and Germany; leading sources of imports are Côte d’Ivoire, France, the United Kingdom, Belgium, China, Germany, and Spain.

C Transportation and Communications The Niger is the lifeline of Mali, being navigable by large ships for most of its course in the country from July to January. The Sénégal River is navigable from Kayes to Saint-Louis, in Senegal. A railroad links Koulikoro, Bamako, and Kayes with the port of Dakar in Senegal. Mali has 15,100 km (9,383 mi) of roads, of which 12 percent are paved. An international airport is located near Bamako. Air Mali, the state airline, offers international and domestic service. Telephone, telegraph, and radio services are publicly owned and operated. There were 2 telephone mainlines for every 1,000 inhabitants in 1997; the country had 49 radio receivers and 4 television sets in use for every 1,000 persons in 1996.

V GOVERNMENT
Until 1991, Mali was governed under a constitution drawn up in 1974 and made effective, with amendments, in 1979. Elected twice without opposition, President Moussa Traoré ruled as a dictator through the nation’s sole legal political party, the Democratic Union of the Malian People, founded in 1976. After a coup in March 1991, this party was dissolved. A new constitution, approved by popular referendum in January 1992, established Mali as a multiparty republic with a president directly elected to a five-year term. The president appoints the prime minister, who selects the other members of the council of ministers. The unicameral National Assembly consists of 129 deputies elected to five-year terms.

VI HISTORY
Mali was the core area of the great empires of the western Sudan: Ghana, Mali, and Songhai, with centers of trade, learning, and culture in such cities as Djénné, Tombouctou, and Gao.

The state of Ghana originated early in the Christian era and reached its apogee between 950 and 1050. The empire of Mali originated in the 11th century, but its period of greatness began under Sundiata, who ruled from around 1235 to 1255, and reached its peak in the early 14th century under Mansa Musa, who extended the empire until it reached from the Atlantic coast to east of Gao.

The decline of Mali was rapid, although the kings continued to rule until 1645. Its place was taken by the Songhai Empire of Gao, whose great kings were Sunni Ali, from 1464 to 1492, and Askia Muhammad, from 1493 to 1528. At its greatest extent, Songhai reached from the Atlantic to Kano and included most of modern Mali and parts of Guinea. Most of the empire was destroyed by a Moroccan invasion in 1591.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, several small states developed along the Niger basin, notably that of Segu. The states fell during the mid-19th-century holy war waged by the Muslim leader al-Hajj Umar, whose theocratic empire extended from Tombouctou to the headwaters of the Niger and Sénégal. His son and successor, Ahmadu, was defeated by the French in 1893.

In 1904 modern Mali was made part of the French colony of Haut-Sénégal-Niger and in 1920 was constituted the French Sudan, as a constituent territory of French West Africa.

African political activity was banned by the French in Mali until after World War II (1939-1945). Various parties that were then formed eventually merged to form the Sudanese Union, which became the Malian section of the interterritorial African Democratic Rally. By the time of the 1957 reforms, the union was the main party.

In 1958 the French Sudan voted to join the new French Community, and it was proclaimed the Sudanese Republic on November 24, 1958. On January 17, 1959, it joined with Senegal to form the Federation of Mali, which proclaimed its independence June 20, 1960, with Modibo Keita as president. The federation broke up in September, the former French Sudan retaining the name Mali and Keita remaining president of the new Republic of Mali, proclaimed September 22, 1960. Later that same month the republic became a member of the United Nations. After independence Mali pursued a policy of economic development along socialist lines.

In November 1968 army officers overthrew the one-man rule of President Keita and established a military junta led by Lieutenant Moussa Traoré, who later assumed the presidency. His government, however, was unable to advance the economy appreciably, having to contend both with lack of capital and a famine-causing drought in the mid-1970s. An internal power struggle in 1978 led to an attempted coup. In the aftermath, several former members of the junta were tried and sentenced, while political unrest and repression spread. President Traoré, running as the only candidate, was returned to office in 1979 and 1985.

A border war with Burkina Faso (Upper Volta) was halted by a cease-fire in late 1985. Under pressure from its creditors, Mali restructured its economy in the late 1980s to privatize unprofitable government enterprises. Traoré was overthrown in March 1991 by a group of army officers. A new constitution providing for a multiparty republic was approved in January 1992, and Alpha Oumar Konaré was elected president in April. Rioting students opposed to Konaré damaged numerous government buildings in Bamako in April 1993. An attempted coup by supporters of Traoré collapsed in December of that year.

The constitutional court declared the legislative elections held in April 1997 to be invalid because of fraud and lack of organization. Opposition groups urged that presidential elections scheduled for May be postponed. The elections were held nonetheless, although they were boycotted by all but one of the opposition groups. Konaré was reelected.

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