Bamako & the South

The south is the Mandé heartland. Here, according to the epic told by griots, Sundiata Keita defeated the Sosso king Soumaoro Kanté at Kirina in the 13th century and founded the Mali Empire; the assembly at Kouroukan Fouga, near Kangaba, is remembered as the place where the new state's rules were proclaimed. Gold from the fields of the upper Niger and Senegal made the empire rich, and the Malinké and Bambara peoples who descend from it still dominate the region.

After the empire's decline the south broke into smaller states. The Bambara kingdom of Ségou held the Niger valley, and in the 19th century the Senufo kingdom of Kénédougou, ruled from Sikasso by Tieba Traoré and then Babemba Traoré, built massive earthen walls that withstood a long siege by the conqueror Samori Touré in the late 1880s. The French advanced from the Senegal River: they built a fort at Médine near Kayes, which held out against El Hadj Umar Tall's forces in 1857, reached Bamako — then a modest trading town — in 1883, and took Sikasso in 1898, when Babemba chose death over surrender.

Kayes was the capital of French Sudan from 1892, but the Dakar–Niger railway, completed in the early 20th century, shifted weight to Bamako, which became the capital of French Sudan in 1908 and of independent Mali in 1960. The capital has been the stage of every political turn since: the March 1991 protests that ended Moussa Traoré's rule, and the coups of 2012 and 2020, both launched from the army camp at Kati just outside the city.

Bambara, or Bamanankan, is the language of the south's streets, markets and radio, and its Malinké cousin is spoken in the Mandé hills; the Senufo and Minianka live around Sikasso and Koutiala, the Soninke and Khassonké around Kayes, and Fula herders throughout. Islam is the majority faith, but older traditions run deep: the Bambara initiation societies such as the Komo, the carved antelope headdresses called ciwara danced in honour of farming, and the brotherhoods of donso hunters with their own songs and costumes. In Kangaba the Kamablon, a sacred house, is re-roofed every seven years in a ceremony recognised as UNESCO intangible heritage, and the balafon traditions of the Senufo are listed too.

Music is the region's calling card. The griots, or jeli, keep genealogies and the Sundiata epic alive with kora, ngoni and balafon; the Wassoulou country south of the Niger gave its name to a style of women's song made famous by Oumou Sangaré; and the region produced Salif Keïta, Toumani Diabaté and the duo Amadou & Mariam.

The Soninke of the Kayes region have a long tradition of emigration, not least to France, and their home villages are built on money sent back. Greetings are long and matter everywhere, family names signal clan alliances, and the joking-cousin banter between clans is part of daily courtesy.

Bamako, spread along both banks of the Niger beneath the Koulouba and Point G hills, has grown from a colonial town to a city of more than four million people, and is still growing fast. Sikasso, Kayes, Koutiala, Kita, Bougouni and Koulikoro are the other main towns.

The south is Mali's farm belt. Cotton, grown by small family farms, is the main cash crop, alongside maize, millet, sorghum, mangoes, potatoes and shea nuts. Gold mines in the Kayes region and around Sikasso are the country's biggest export earners, and lithium is now mined near Bougouni. The Sélingué dam on the Sankarani and the Manantali dam on the Bafing supply much of the country's electricity.

In Bamako the day starts with the call to prayer, a breakfast of porridge or bread, and green sotrama minibuses crossing the bridges into the centre. Markets fill before the heat, work slows in the afternoon, and evenings are for tea on the street, football and wedding parties. Fuel shortages, power cuts, rising prices and the flow of displaced people from the centre weigh on the city.

Southern cooking is built on grain and sauce. Tô, the stiff millet or maize porridge, is eaten with sauces of baobab leaf, okra or groundnut; tiga dege na, a Bambara peanut stew with meat, is often equated with the maafé known across the region. Breakfast is often moni, balls of millet flour boiled with sugar and milk, or bread with coffee, and dégué, a sweet mix of millet and sour milk, is a favourite dessert.

The south's orchards and fields shape the table: mangoes, cereals and vegetables from the Sikasso region, and shea butter, karité, used for cooking as well as the skin. Soumbala, the fermented néré-seed seasoning, gives sauces their depth. Fish comes fresh or smoked from the Niger at Bamako and Koulikoro.

On the street in Bamako the staples are grilled mutton and brochettes, fried plantain and yam, and bean fritters. Drinks are ginger, hibiscus and tamarind juices and the rounds of sweet green tea; in non-Muslim villages of the south, home-brewed millet beer is still made for festivals and farm work.

Bamako itself holds the region's best museum, the National Museum of Mali, with its masks, bogolan cloth and archaeological finds, set beside a botanical garden and a zoo. The Grand Marché and the artisans' market sell cloth, jewellery and leather, the Koulouba and Point G hills give views over the river, and the city hosts the Rencontres de Bamako, a biennial of African photography.

South-west of the capital, the Mandé hills rise in sandstone escarpments around Siby, where the natural rock arch of Kamandjan crowns a ridge. Further up the Niger, Kangaba guards the Kamablon sacred house, heart of the Mandé tradition.

Sikasso keeps fragments of its great earthen walls, the tata, and the Mamelon hill in the town centre; nearby are the Farako falls and the caves of Missirikoro.

West along the Dakar–Niger railway lies the Kayes railway country: Kita beneath Mount Kita, the Boucle du Baoulé national park, and Kayes on the Senegal River, with the old French fort of Médine and the Félou falls just upstream. At Bafoulabé the Bafing and the Bakoye meet to form the Senegal River, and between there and Kayes the river drops over the Gouina falls, a wide curtain of water at its best after the rains.