Mali

Mali is a big country in Africa.

It has no sea. Much of it is hot, dry desert. The long Niger River flows through the middle.

Mali is a large, landlocked country in West Africa. Its northern half is part of the Sahara, and most of the country is flat and dry. The Niger River flows through Mali for about 1,600 kilometers, and most people live near it.

Long ago, three great empires, Ghana, Mali and Songhai, grew rich here from trade across the Sahara. The capital, Bamako, sits on the Niger River and is growing fast. About 25.2 million people lived in Mali in 2025.

Mali is a landlocked country of western Africa, lying mostly in the Saharan and Sahelian regions; it is largely flat and arid. The Niger River crosses its interior as the main trading and transport artery, and its periodic floods leave fertile soil and pasture. The population, small for one of Africa's largest countries, is largely centered along the river.

The area once belonged to the three great precolonial Sudanic empires of Ghana, Mali and Songhai. Under the 2023 constitution, 13 national languages, including Bambara, Fula, Songhai and Tamasheq, became official, and French became a working language. The World Bank put the population at 25,198,821 in 2025; about three-fifths of people live in rural villages.

Djenné has a huge mosque made of mud.

People put new mud on it every year. Timbuktu is an old city near the desert. Bamako is the capital.

Djenné's Great Mosque is the largest mud building in the world. Wooden poles stick out of its walls, framing them and making a kind of ladder for the yearly job of putting on fresh mud. Djenné's old town, with nearly 2,000 traditional houses, is a World Heritage Site.

Timbuktu, founded about 1100, was a meeting place for caravans from North Africa and traders from the forests to the south, and a famous center of learning. Its Ahmed Baba Institute keeps a large collection of old manuscripts. In the center of the country, the Dogon people's villages cling to the cliffs of Bandiagara.

The older towns, Djenné, Timbuktu, Gao and Ségou, are built in the Sudanese style: tall mud walls with protruding wooden beams that frame the walls and serve as a ladder for yearly replastering. Britannica calls the Djenné mosque the epitome of the style and the largest mud building in the world; UNESCO's Old Towns of Djenné, inhabited since 250 BCE, include the archaeological site of Djenné-Djeno and nearly 2,000 surviving traditional houses raised on hillocks above the floods, and the mosque was rebuilt in 1906–07.

Timbuktu, founded about 1100 CE, flourished under the Mali and Songhai empires as a center of trade and Islamic scholarship; the Ahmed Baba Institute preserves historical Arabic and African manuscripts. Timbuktu and the Tomb of Askia in Gao, a pyramid-like Songhai monument, were placed on UNESCO's List of World Heritage in Danger in 2012. The Dogon region around the Bandiagara escarpment is known for cliffside villages, and Mopti is a busy market center.

The Niger River flows through Mali.

People fish and travel on it in long boats. When the river floods, it leaves rich soil. Then crops can grow.

The Niger River flows through Mali for slightly more than 1,600 kilometers. Near Mopti, where the land is almost flat, it spreads into an inland delta, a maze of branches and lakes, before making a great turn called the Niger Bend. Its floods leave rich soil for farming.

Mali has three climate zones: the Sudanic zone in the south, with savanna and up to 1,400 millimeters of rain a year; the Sahel, with 200 to 510 millimeters; and the Sahara in the north, where days can reach 47 °C or more. From March to June, a hot, dusty wind called the harmattan blows from the Sahara.

Mali is largely flat: plateaus and plains crossed by the Niger and Sénégal river systems. The Niger, rising in the Fouta Djallon, flows slightly more than 1,600 km through Mali, about two-fifths of its length; below its confluence with the Bani at Mopti, the almost level land makes it form an interior delta of branches and lakes, and at Bourem it turns southeast in the Niger Bend. High water comes on the upper river from July to October and at the delta from September to November. The Dogon Plateau ends in cliffs approaching 1,000 m at Bandiagara, and Hombori Tondo (1,155 m) is the highest point.

The dry season (November to June) brings the cool northeast alize, then the hot harmattan, with daytime highs of 40–45 °C; the June–October monsoon brings thunderstorms. The Sudanic zone gets 510–1,400 mm of rain, the Sahel 200–510 mm, and the Sahara has days of 47–60 °C and nights of 4–5 °C. Since the late 20th century, deforestation, overgrazing and drought have sped the spread of the desert into the Sahel.

Elephants live in Mali.

Hyenas and gazelles live there too. Hippos and crocodiles live in the rivers. Baobab trees grow in the Sahel.

The savanna and Sahel of Mali have gazelles, antelopes, elephants and hyenas. Hippos and crocodiles live in the rivers, and ostriches, monkeys and snakes are found too. Douentza Elephant Reserve in the east protects elephants.

Trees change from south to north: néré and shea trees grow in the savanna, baobabs and doum palms in the Sahel, then only short, thorny plants such as acacias, and finally almost nothing in the far north of the Sahara.

Britannica describes the fauna of the Sudanic and Sahelian zones as rich and varied: gazelles, antelopes, elephants and hyenas; crocodiles and hippopotamuses in the rivers; and many monkeys, snakes and birds, including the ostrich. Major sanctuaries include Boucle du Baoulé National Park in the west and the Ansongo-Ménaka Animal Reserve and Douentza (Gourma) Elephant Reserve in the east.

The Sudanic zone has forest corridors along the Guinean border and river valleys, with savanna trees such as néré (Parkia biglobosa), karite or shea (Butyrospermum parkii) and Senegal khaya; the Sahel has steppe with baobab, doum palm and palmyra, giving way northward to mimosa, acacia and cram-cram grass, and then to bare desert. Some four-fifths of the working population farms, and fishermen work the Niger and Bani rivers.

About 25.2 million people live in Mali.

Many people speak Bambara. Most families farm or keep animals. Music and dancing are very popular.

The Bambara are Mali's largest group, and their language, Bambara, is used by about four out of five people to talk across groups. Other peoples include the Fulani, Soninke, Malinke, Songhai, Dogon and Tuareg. Since 2023, 13 national languages have been official, and French is a working language.

Most families farm, growing millet, rice, corn, yams and cassava, and cotton to sell. Music and dance are the most common cultural activities, and Malian musicians such as Salif Keita and Oumou Sangaré are famous around the world. Football is the most popular sport.

Britannica stresses that ethnicity in Mali is fluid: people may marry outside their group or adopt Bambara, the most widely spoken African language, used as a lingua franca by some four-fifths of the population. Imazighen (including the Tuareg) and Moors live in the Sahel and north of the Niger Bend; the Bambara along the upper Niger; the Soninke, heirs of Ghana, in the west; the Malinke, heirs of Mali, in the southwest; the Songhai along the Niger; the Dogon around Bandiagara; and Fulani, once mostly nomadic herders, in the Sahel and Macina. The Tuareg keep their own Amazigh language and tifinagh script.

About four-fifths of workers are subsistence farmers; millet, rice, wheat, corn, yams and cassava are staples, and gold, cotton and live animals are the main exports. Music and dance dominate cultural life, from Wassoulou women's music to the 'desert blues' of the Tuareg group Tinariwen. Wrestling matches with drumming and praise-singing are festive events, and football is the most popular sport.