Countries

The Republic of Mali, located in north-western Africa, is bounded on the north-east by Algeria, on the east by Niger, on the south by Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, and Guinea, and on the west by Senegal and Mauritania. Its area is 1 240 192 km². Situated between latitudes 10° and 24° N, it is a landlocked country with frontiers not corresponding to any natural feature. Access to the sea is through Dakar to the west, by the Océan­Niger railway; through Abidjan to the south, linked by road to the capital; through Conakry to the south-east, by the Conakry­Niger railway; and by tracks running from Kankan, the Guinean rail-head, to Bamako and western Mali.

The topography is mostly low plateaux and basins with occasional rocky hills. The plateaux never exceed 300 or 400 m. Sloping both northward toward the Niger basin and southward, they cover large areas and have lateritic soils.

The only irregularities are the gorges of the Niger valley and the striking precipices resulting from erosion (the Bandiagara cliffs). Adrar des Iforas in the north-east is a crystalline massif sculpted by desert erosion, while in the south-west the Guinean Fouta Djallon massif extends into Mali in the form of a plateau sloping north-eastwards.

The Niger flows sluggishly through a huge depression with very little gradient, spreading out in the Macina, an enormous network of lakes and swamps between Mopoti and Tombouctou. The northern third of the country lies within the Sahara. In the west is a part of the Sahel, a semiarid transitional zone between areas of savannah and the Sahara desert. Rolling grasslands cover the south.

The climate is of the warm tropical type with average temperatures ranging from about 24° to 32° C and can be subdivided as follows:

• A Sudano-Guinean zone in the south and centre of the country where annual rainfall is over 1 300 mm, with seven rainy months;
• A Sudanian zone a little further north where rainfall ranges from 700 to 1 300 mm;
• A Sahelian zone marking the transition between the savannah and desert zones with rainfall between 200 and 700 mm;
• A Saharan zone in the north of the country where the sparse rainfall is under 200 mm per year. Here, temperatures often exceed 38 °C and may rise to more than 43 °C during the day. At night, however, temperatures may reach as low as 4 °C.

The designations employed and the presentation of material in this publication do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries.