[9] The country is bordered to the north by Algeria, to the east by Niger, to the northwest by Mauritania, to the south by Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast, and to the west by Guinea and Senegal.

[21][22][23] Besides being a hub of trade and mining, medieval Mali was a centre of Islam, culture and knowledge, with Timbuktu becoming a renowned place of learning with its university, one of the oldest in the world and still active.

In the late 19th century, during the Scramble for Africa, France seized control of Mali, making it a part of French Sudan; as the Sudanese Republic, a brief federation with Senegal was formed, achieving independence in 1960.

In January 2012, an armed conflict broke out in northern Mali, in which Tuareg rebels took control of a territory in the north, and in April declared the secession of a new state, Azawad.

Early ceramics have been discovered at the central Malian site of Ounjougou dating to about 9,400 BC, and are believed to represent an instance of the independent invention of pottery in the region.

By the sixth century AD, the lucrative trans-Saharan trade in gold, salt and slaves had begun, facilitating the rise of West Africa's great empires.

[38] Mali was once part of three famed West African empires which controlled trans-Saharan trade in gold, salt, other precious commodities, and slaves majorly during the reign of Mansa Musa from c. 1312 – c.

According to John Iliffe, "The worst crises were in the 1680s, when famine extended from the Senegambian coast to the Upper Nile and 'many sold themselves for slaves, only to get a sustenance', and especially in 1738–1756, when West Africa's greatest recorded subsistence crisis, due to drought and locusts, reportedly killed half the population of Timbuktu.

[40] He quickly established a one-party state, adopted an independent African and socialist orientation with close ties to the East, and implemented extensive nationalization of economic resources.

During this time strict programs, imposed to satisfy demands of the International Monetary Fund, brought increased hardship upon the country's population, while elites close to the government supposedly lived in growing wealth.

[47] In response to growing demands for multi-party democracy, the Traoré regime allowed some limited political liberalization in the late 1980s, but refused to usher in a full-fledged democratic system.

[47] In 1990, cohesive opposition movements began to emerge, and was complicated by the turbulent rise of ethnic violence in the north following the return of many Tuaregs who had migrated to Algeria and Libya during the drought.

[59] In March, military officer Amadou Sanogo seized power in a coup d'état, citing Touré's failures in quelling the rebellion, and leading to sanctions and an embargo by the Economic Community of West African States.

[61] However, Islamist groups, including Ansar Dine and Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), who had helped the MNLA defeat the government, turned on the Tuareg and took control of the north[62] with the goal of implementing sharia in Mali.

[84] Popular unrest began on 5 June 2020 following irregularities in the March and April parliamentary elections, including outrage against the kidnapping of opposition leader Soumaïla Cissé.

[96] According to Human Rights Watch, Malian troops and suspected Russian mercenaries from the Wagner Group executed around 300 civilian men in central Mali in March 2022.

[99] A UN panel reported that in the first three months of 2022, 543 civilians were killed and 269 wounded, warning the 2015 peace agreement between the government and pro-independence groups was threatened by a potential risk of confrontation for the first time in five years.

Mali borders Algeria to the north-northeast, Niger to the east, Burkina Faso to the south-east, Ivory Coast to the south, Guinea to the south-west, and Senegal to the west and Mauritania to the north-west.

[129][130] Working to control and resolve regional conflicts, such as in Ivory Coast, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, is one of Mali's major foreign policy goals.

[145] Before the August 2020 coup, U.S. foreign assistance to Mali exceeded $135 million in FY 2020, aiming to bolster fragile peace, democratic governance and regional security, while addressing social and economic vulnerabilities.

[6] The largest ethnic groups are Bambara (33.3%), Fulani (Peuhl) (13.3%), Sarakole/Soninke/Marka (9.8%), Senufo/Manianka (9.6%), Malinke (8.8%), Dogon (8.7%), Sonrai (5.9%), Bobo (2.1%), Tuareg/Bella (1.7%), other Malian (6%), from members of Economic Community of West Africa (0.4%), other (0.3%) (2018 est.).

[158] In the far north, there is a division between Berber-descended Tuareg nomad populations and the darker-skinned Bella or Tamasheq people, due to the historical spread of slavery in the region.

[171] Islam as historically practiced in Mali has been malleable and adapted to local conditions; relations between Muslims and practitioners of minority religious faiths have generally been amicable.

[171] Mali's actual primary school enrolment rate is low, in large part because families are unable to cover the cost of uniforms, books, supplies, and other fees required to attend.

For example, the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) and the Aga Khan Foundation, trained women's groups to make equinut, a healthy and nutritional version of the traditional recipe di-dèguè (comprising peanut paste, honey and millet or rice flour).

[183] The unstable government of Mali has led to organizations like USAID attempting to improve the lives of the people, mainly women and girls' rights in order to re-engage the development of the country.

[184] Similarly, technical and vocational education has a lower numbers of girls participating and are inadequately distributed in the country because the training centers are focused in the urban cities.

Some famous Malian influences in music are kora virtuoso musician Toumani Diabaté, the ngoni with Bassekou Kouyate the virtuoso of the electric jeli ngoni, the late roots and blues guitarist Ali Farka Touré, the Tuareg band Tinariwen, Khaira Arby, and several Afro-pop artists such as Salif Keita, the duo Amadou et Mariam, Oumou Sangare, Fatoumata Diawara, Rokia Traore, and Habib Koité.

[191] The best-known novel by a Malian writer is Yambo Ouologuem's Le devoir de violence, which won the 1968 Prix Renaudot but whose legacy was marred by accusations of plagiarism.

[190][191] Other well-known Malian writers include Baba Traoré, Modibo Sounkalo Keita, Massa Makan Diabaté, Moussa Konaté, and Fily Dabo Sissoko.