Guinea–Mali border

[2] The border then leaves this river, going overland in an eastward and then southward direction via a series of irregular lines, before reaching the tripoint with the Ivory Coast.

France occupied this area in 1900; Mali (then referred to as French Sudan) was originally included, along with modern Niger and Burkina Faso, within the Upper Senegal and Niger colony, however it was later split off and became a constituent of the federal colony of French West Africa (Afrique occidentale française, abbreviated AOF).

[4] The precise date the Guinea-Mali boundary was drawn appears to be uncertain, though it is thought to have been drawn at the time of the formal institution of French Guinea in the 1890s; the border was later described in more detail in a French arrete of 1911.

[2] As the movement for decolonisation grew in the post-Second World War era, France gradually granted more political rights and representation for their sub-Saharan African colonies, culminating in the granting of broad internal autonomy to French West Africa and French Equatorial Africa in 1958 within the framework of the French Community.

[2] In recent years gold mining in the border region has boomed, resulting in several localised clashes along the frontier.