Mali

Mali is a landlocked country of western Africa, mostly in the Saharan and Sahelian regions, whose relatively small population is concentrated along the upper Niger River. The territory was once part of three great precolonial Sudanic empires, Ghana, Mali and Songhai, and its fabled trading and learning center, Timbuktu, sits on the upper Niger in the country's own north. The French conquered the area in the mid to late nineteenth century, folding it into French West Africa; the Mali Federation, formed with Senegal, broke up in August 1960, and a congress of the US-RDA proclaimed the independent Republic of Mali that September.