Mali, officially the Republic of Mali, is a landlocked nation in Western Africa. It is the seventh largest country in Africa. It borders Algeria on the north, Niger on the east, Burkina Faso and the Côte d'Ivoire on the south, Guinea on the south-west, and Senegal and Mauritania on the west. Its straight borders on the north stretch into the center of the Sahara, while the country's south, where the majority of inhabitants live, features the Niger and Senegal rivers.
The area of present-day Mali was once part of three West African empires that controlled trans-Saharan trade: the Ghana Empire, the Mali Empire (from which Mali takes its name), and the Songhai Empire. In the late 1800s, Mali fell under French control, becoming part of French Sudan. Mali gained its independence, with Senegal, as the Mali Federation in 1959, becoming the independent nation of Mali in 1960. After a long period of one-party rule, a 1991 coup led to the writing of a new constitution and the establishment of Mali as a democratic, multi-party state. Mali is a landlocked nation in West Africa, located southwest of Algeria. At 1,240,000 square kilometers (479,000 sq mi), Mali is the world's 24th-largest country and is comparable in size to South Africa or Peru. Most of the country lies in the southern Sahara, which produces a hot, dust-laden harmattan haze common during dry seasons. The country extends southwest through the subtropical Sahel to the Sudanian savanna zone. Mali is mostly flat, rising to rolling northern plains covered by sand. The Adrar des Ifoghas lies in the northeast.
Mali's climate ranges from subtropical in the south to arid in the north. Most of the country receives negligible rainfall; droughts are frequent. Elsewhere, it is rainy from approximately late June to early December; during this time, flooding of the Niger River is common.
The nation has considerable natural resources, with gold, uranium, phosphates, kaolinite, salt and limestone being most widely exploited. Mali faces numerous environmental challenges, including desertification, deforestation, soil erosion, and inadequate supplies of potable water. |
