The national flag of Mali (drapeau national du Mali) is a tricolour with three equal vertical stripes.

From the hoist (the place where the flagpole meets the flag) the colours are green, gold, and red, the pan-African colours.

This flag was the same, except the golden stripe had a black kanaga, a shape of a squatter man with arms raised to the sky.

The figure was removed due to the opposition, in a country whose population is 90% Muslim (95% Sunni 5% Shia), of Islamic fundamentalists[1] (see Aniconism in Islam, the belief against making pictures of the human figure).

[2] The green stands for fertility of the land, gold stands for purity and mineral wealth, and the red symbolizes the blood shed for independence from the French.