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Mali is a country in West Africa. During colonial rule it was called French Sudan. The area of ??the country is 1,240,192 square kilometers, has a population of 20251000 (ranked 60th) according to the average United Nations estimate for 2020 ..
and its capital is Bamako. It borders Algeria to the northeast, Niger to the east, Burkina Faso to the south, C te d'Ivoire and Guinea to the south, and Senegal and Mauritania to the west.
Mali's climate is dry and hot, the northern 1/3 of the country is located in the Sahara desert. The country is mainly rural.
The flag of Chora is tricolor in equal vertical stripes, starting from the green (front), yellow (central) and red and in a ratio of width 2 to 3.
Mali has no access to the sea. It stretches from the southern Sahara Desert to the Sahel and the Sudanese savannah. It is the eighth largest country in Africa, about nine and a half times larger than Greece.
Desert and semi-desert areas cover two-thirds of Mali's surface. The Niger River forms the so-called Inner Delta of Niger or Masina, a large and fertile area, as it forms an arc before turning south and emptying into the Gulf of Guinea.
Mali was once part of one of the three West African empires that controlled the Sahara trade in gold, salt and slaves. The oldest of these was the Ghanaian Empire, which extended from the 8th century until 1078, when it was conquered by the Almoravids.
The Mali Empire followed with its seat in upper Niger and flourished until the 14th century. Timbuktu, which was also an Islamic center, flourished at that time. Internal frictions led to the dissolution of the empire and the emergence of a new power, the Shogai, a tribe living in northwestern Nigeria.
The Songhai became independent from the descendants of the Mali Empire and spread throughout the eastern region. In 1591 Morocco invaded the region and the dissolution of the Songhai Empire marked the end of the region as a transit hub.
A key reason was the fact that the Europeans had now established sea freight routes which made land transport through the Sahara insignificant. During the 18th century the inhabitants of the area experienced a great shortage of food and many went so far as to sell themselves in slave markets just to have something to eat.
Especially in the period 1738, 1756 drought and locusts caused about half of the population of Timbuktu to starve to death. At the end of the 19th century the area was conquered by French troops who named the whole area, including Mali, French Sudan.
In 1959 French Sudan was renamed the Republic of Sudan and Senegal joined to form the Federation of Mali. The federation gained its independence in 1960. The Republic of Sudan became the independent Republic of Mali on September 22, 1960, and Modibo Keita was elected its first president.
He pursued a one-party policy with a socialist orientation and proceeded with nationalizations.