Mali

The Republic of Mali is a large, northwest African country with 14 million citizens, who live in a terrain bordered and landlocked by seven other nations, including Algeria, Burkina Faso, and Mauritania. Mali stands at the crossroads of global exchange in Africa, weaving a hybridity of Arab, West African, and European cultures enmeshed through centuries of trade, conquest, empire, and colonial relationships. Though poverty-stricken and consisting of predominantly nonarable desert, Mali is considered to be one of the most democratic nations in Africa, with free and fair elections, an open and variegated press, and a successfully practicing multiparty republic. Formerly called the French Sudan under colonial rule and later the Sudanese Republic, at independence in 1960, the nation of Mali faced a two-decade dictatorship and military coup before the country's first president was democratically elected in 1992. Amadou Toumani Toure played a significant role in bringing Malians out of dictatorship in 1991, and perhaps because of this, as twice-elected and current president, the former [Page 743]general is trusted and highly regarded as a sign of national stability.

Financially, loans from the IMF and other international agencies have kept Mali afloat as it works to improve social and industrial development. Malian cotton, a significant national industry, has not become a viable export commodity due to drought and overly subsidized global produce. Ethnically, Mali is made up of the Mande, Fulani, Voltaic, Songhai, Moor, and Tuareg peoples, among others. Linguistically, Malians speak the official language, French, as well as Arabic, Berber, and Bambara. The Bambara (or Bamana), who are predominantly agricultural, provided the nation with the Chiwara symbol, a carved wooden antelope, which represents vitality, perseverance, and social responsibility to community.

Religiously, Mali is markedly Sunnī and Sufi Muslim. Adherents of Christianity and indigenous practices constitute only 1/10 of the Malian population. Islam peacefully came to the region in the ninth century and spread across what is now present-day Mali via the trans-Saharan trade routes and the ancient Mali, Ghana, and Songhai empires, which were collectively active between the 9th and 17th centuries. Just as the Great Mosque of Djenné is known across Africa as an architectural feat and a site of Muslim pilgrimage, the Malian city of Timbuktu, famous for its kingdom of gold, was a thriving Islamic scholastic center with a university, libraries, transcribers, and clerics by the 12th century. Malian griots, who were traditionally poet-historians, spiritual-political advisors, and singers, are continentally recognized for their keen insights and stories, which are still readily available today in works such as The Epic of Sundiata. As in other West African nations, Islam in Mali is often combined with local practices that can include farming ceremonies, rites of passage, the honoring of ancestors, and traditional arts. In recent years, Mali has faced increasing pressures from al Qaeda, and with threats of kidnapping and harboring of terrorist cells in the countryside, Mali is struggling to rid itself of Islamic extremism and protect its many borders.