The Ganda Koy movement was founded in May 1994, by Seydou Cissé, as a response to rising tensions between Tuaregs and sedentary black tribes of the Gao Region, in northern Mali.

Ganda Koy fighters were recruited among Songhai, Bambara, Fulani, Bozo and Tuareg-Bella tribesmen.

[3][2] Ganda Koy immediately rejected the “National Pact” for Peace signed in April 1992.

[3] In 2008, a Ganda Iso military leader, Sergeant Amadou Diallo, conducted a "broad daylight massacre" where four Tuareg civilians were killed.

[4] On 1 September 2012, the town of Douentza, in the Mopti Region, until then controlled by Ganda Iso, is taken without violence by the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO).