The Economic & Geopolitical History of Mali, Part 1: Gold & Medieval Mali
From One of the Most Important Empires to One of the Poorest Countries
Mali, a West African nation in the Sahel, is 95% Muslim and home to 20+ ethnic groups including Fulani, Mande peoples (Bambara, Mandinka, Soninke), Songhai, Tuareg Berbers, and Arab Berbers. Larger than California and Texas combined but with 25M people, Mali is relatively sparsely populated. It is a low income country and is the 6th least developed nation on earth, with almost two-thirds of the Malian population working as subsistence farmers.
The Sahel
The Sahel lies below Sahara desert, but above the costal areas. Sahel is Arabic for “shore”, as the Amazigh/Berbers (North Africans) & Arabs analogized the desert as a “sea of sand”, conceived their camels as “boats”, and thought of Empires in West Africa, like Takrur, Ghana, Gao, Mali, & Songhai as “ports” to obtain gold, ivory, slaves, and other goods.
Economy & Development
In 2022, the average Malian farmer produced 1.67 tons of food per hectare, which is below the average for food deficit countries, 2.35 tons per hectare. As of 2024, Mali has the 3rd worst credit rating in Africa, as its bonds are considered “junk”. 20% of Mali’s government budget comes from foreign aid.
The country was historically socialist (in the state-ownership sense, not worker-ownership), but after a series of 19 IMF loans (Mali owes the IMF $92M), the government now owns (or partly owns) 45 enterprises, including mining, banking, utilities, telecom firm, cotton processing, cigarettes, sugar, and the airports.
Historical context
Mali is named after the Medieval Malian Empire, and Mali is a Mandinka word for Hippopotamus. While the empire encompassed modern Mali, Senegal, Gambia, Mauritania, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau and the northern parts of Burkina Faso, Ghana, and Ivory Coast, the modern state is a French colonial construct, merging the Mandinka south with the Tuareg Berber north.
The Niger River divides Mali into the arid, sparsely populated Arab &Tuareg Berber-dominated North (known as “Azawad”), and the fertile, densely populated Black Mandinka (also known as Mande or Malinké) South. Tensions persist between the Tuareg minority and Mandinka majority, fueled by historical conflicts and marginalization. Bamako, the capital, enjoys better services, contrasting with underdeveloped Tuareg regions. If you read my series on Niger or Chad, you’ll be quite familiar with other Sub-Saharan African majorities “oppressing” the Tuareg & Arab-Berber minorities.
The Tuareg nomads were divided by the Europeans in five separate countries (Mauritania, Algeria, Burkina Faso, Niger, & Libya). The Tuareg Berbers have tried to secede from Mali four times since Mali has received independence.
Mali’s Resources
Gold makes up 96% of Mali’s foreign earnings and 25% of its budget.
Despite its historical significance in medieval gold trade, Mali's influence in the modern global gold market has diminished. Mali possesses 1% of global gold reserves remaining, which still places Mali in 14th place globally.
In terms of gold production & exports, Mali is in 11th place in both respects.
Unfortunately, gold is not much of a money maker for Mali like oil is for Gulf states. When you take Mali’s gold exports and divide that export revenue by the population, Mali makes roughly $330 per person selling gold. Just to compare, UAE makes over $10K per person from crude oil & gas exports. Speaking of UAE, Mali’s largest trading partner is selling gold to UAE (Switzerland is a close second).
Unfortunately, Mali has the worst record-keeping and largest illegal gold-trade discrepancy in Africa. See graph below:
Gold production in Mali takes two forms:
Industrial mining is handled by multinational firms like Barrick Gold, B2Gold, & Sky Gold (Canadian), AngloGold Ashanti (South African), Resolute Mining (Australian), and which operate large, tax-paying mines (taxed at 25%) that are easily traceable.
Artisanal mining, however, continues the ancient tradition dating back to the Ghana Empire — digging by hand. Or, now with pickaxes and shovels. It’s a lifeline for Malians who can’t earn enough from farming, fishing, or herding.
Artisanal mining often escapes the authorities. If you want to see a video of artisanal mining, click here. Many miners use clandestine networks to avoid export taxes, costing the government billions in lost revenue. It’s also dangerous. In January 2024, the Mali government uncovered 80 dead bodies from a collapsed illegal gold mine.
At this point, industrial mining production is tiny compared to artisanal mining. The difference is in the tunes of billions of dollars.
Gold was not always Mali’s biggest export. All the easy alluvial gold was already extracted through the Medieval trade with Arabs. At independence in 1960, Mali’s main exports were cattle, peanuts and cotton, which made up 70% of exports through the 1980s. But after foreign investment expanded mining in the 2000s, new gold mines were excavated, and Mali returned to being a gold hub as it was in Medieval times. Today, Mali’s ability to import food, fuel, and medicine, fund public services, and subsidize industries depends almost entirely on gold prices.
Malian incomes have followed commodity cycles for decades. A cotton boom in the 1970s drove growth, followed by two “lost decades” in the 1980s–90s as prices fell. The early 2000s gold boom revived growth, but it has stagnated since 2014, mirroring flat gold prices.
Also, unfortunately, Mali doesn’t really sell enough gold (legally). Almost every year Mali spends more than takes in.
Mali is the opposite of a gulf state. Gulf states like Oman or Bahrain usually sell more oil & gas from trade than they spend. As a result, Oman and Bahrain have so much dollars that they buy US assets like treasury bonds and real estate in their Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF). As of 2023, Bahrain’s SWF has $18B and Oman’s SWF has $47B. As of May 2024, Mali doesn’t have one.
Luckily, gold is having a price boom in 2024, so maybe Mali will be able to capitalize on that.
Pre Colonialism: The “Western Sudanic” Empires
The Arabs referred to this region as “Bilad al-Sudan” which is Arabic for “land of the Blacks”.
Below you will see the locations of the three West Sudanic Empires (Ghana, Mali, Songhai) and its relations with North Africa.
Despite their size, these kingdoms were sparsely populated. Drought, malaria, tsetse flies, and poor sanitation kept life expectancy low and death rates high, so population growth was slow. Around 1000 AD, during the Ghana Empire, the region’s population was about 3.3 million. By 1600 AD, after Morocco’s invasion of Songhai, it had only doubled to 6.7 million. Yet these empires ruled over 3 million square kilometers, roughly the size of India or all of Western and Central Europe combined.
Because land was abundant, feudalism never developed as it did in Europe, China, or Ethiopia. In Europe, rulers’ rights to taxes came from land ownership. In the Western Sudan, authority rested on political and military power instead.
West Africa Empire #1: Ghana or The Wagadou (300AD — 1197AD)
The Ghana Empire, also called Wagadou, arose in what is now southeastern Mauritania and southwestern Mali. Arab geographers such as al-Fazari referred to the kingdom as “Ghana,” which was the title of its ruler, while the people themselves were Soninke, part of the Black Mande-speaking group. Some Sanhaja Berbers also settled there.
Because the Soninke left no written records, most of what we know comes from oral histories preserved by griots—storytellers, poets, dancers, and musicians who memorized dynastic histories—and from Arab chroniclers such as al-Fazari and Ibn Hawqal, who traded in the region. Modern historians try to synthesize Arab history with Griot oral tradition and archaeology.
The empire controlled gold and trade routes, especially those linked to the Bambuk goldfields near the Senegal and Falémé Rivers.
In Wagadou-Ghana, there was a merchant class called the Wangara, which dominated the trade. Caravans of Berber, Arab, and Tuareg traders crossed the Sahara to exchange salt, cloth, and luxury goods for gold, ivory, and slaves. This formed the foundation of the Trans-Saharan (Slave) trade.
Why salt? Salt was scarce for Sub-Saharan Africans. They used salt as food preservative for fish, veggies & meat, for rituals, and for traditional African medicine. Remember electric refrigerators didn’t exist yet!
Through trade, some Soninke merchants converted from traditional animist religions (i.e. serpent worship) to Islam by the 7th century, though the royal court and most commoners remained pagan. The Ghana Empire also conducted slave raids south of its borders to supply captives for the trans-Saharan trade with Arabs.
The Gao Empire (721 AD - 1100 AD)
By the 8th century, a rival empire called Gao emerged on the Niger River in Modern Mali.
Gao competed with Wagadou-Ghana to sell slaves and gold to the North Africans. By 800 AD, Gao had become an important commercial hub, connected to North Africa through the caravan route leading to Sijilmasa, Morocco. Although Wagadou-Ghana dominated the western routes, Gao controlled the eastern ones.
In the 11th century, the Arab geographer Al-Bakri described the Wagadou (Ghana) Kingdom as having a capital, Koumbi Saleh, made of two towns about six miles apart. One was a Muslim town with twelve mosques, while the other was the king’s town, where the ruler and his court practiced idol worship. When the king died, he was buried in a wooden chamber covered with mats and earth to form a hill, and human sacrifices were performed at his tomb.
The Almoravid Invasion (~1076 AD)
In the mid-11th century, the Almoravids, a reformist Berber movement in Morocco founded by Abdullah ibn Yasin among the Sanhaja nomads, launched campaigns across North and West Africa. Seeking to impose their strict Malikite interpretation of Islam, they defeated Wagadou-Ghana around 1076 AD.
The Almoravids briefly seized control of Ghana’s trade routes and gold markets, enslaving many non-Muslim Africans. They also captured Gao. However, their rule over the Sahel was short-lived, collapsing by the late 11th/early 12th century.
The Fractured Empire (12th Century AD)
After the Almoravid decline, Ghana regained partial independence but never recovered its old power. Trade routes fragmented, and new centers such as Djenné and Mema arose along the Niger River during the 12th century. These city-states prospered through gold and slave trading, with as many as 12,000 camels crossing the Sahara each year.
Ghana splintered into many successor states: Yarensa, Ghiryu, Diafanu, and Sosso, all competing for trade alongside Gao, Jenne, and Mema.
By 1235–1239 AD, the Sosso Kingdom, led by Sumanguru Kanté, established temporary dominance after conquering Diafanu and parts of former Ghana.
West Africa Empire #2: Mali (1235 AD-1600 AD)
While Sosso expanded, another power was emerging nearby. Ghiryu, one of the smaller successor states, was absorbed by the rising Mali Kingdom.
According to the Mandinka epic The Epic of Sundiata, Sundiata Keita, a Malinké prince, united the Mande clans and defeated Sosso at the Battle of Kirina (1235 AD). This victory founded the Mali Empire, which became West Africa’s greatest power for the next three centuries.
The people were known as the Malinké (also called Mande, Mandinka, or Mandingo). Mali-nké means “people of Mali,” while Man-dinka means “people of Mande.”
After its formation, Mali controlled the major gold and trade cities of Gao, Timbuktu, Jenné, and Niani, the capital (in modern day Guinea). The empire traded gold, slaves, ivory, kola nuts(a mile narcotic), ostrich feathers, and hides with North African Arabs and Berbers. Taxes levied on caravans funded a large professional army that secured the trade routes.
By the 13th and 14th centuries, Europe’s demand for gold surged as it replaced silver as the principal medium of exchange. Gold financed wars, adorned churches and royalty, and paid for imported goods from Asia. After purchasing gold from Mali, North African merchants resold it to Europeans at steep markups.
At its height, Mali supplied nearly two-thirds of Europe’s gold through the trans-Saharan trade.
Society and Government
Mali’s society was hierarchical. A hereditary slave caste existed alongside free farmers, artisans, and nobles. Slaves were war captives, punished criminals, or debtors; some served as administrators or soldiers, and manumission was possible. Certain servile tribes were barred from intermarrying with the free population and lacked inheritance rights.
Arab chroniclers described Mali as an agrarian confederation with a powerful royal elite “lathered in gold.” The empire consisted of about twelve provinces, each ruled by a local king who paid tribute to the Mansa (emperor). The ruling Keita dynasty maintained stability through alliances and military force.
Islam was the faith of the elite and merchant class, while most of the population practiced traditional animist religions, centered on farming, fishing, and cattle herding. The empire’s currency included salt, gold dust, and cowry shells, and every Mansa was expected to perform the pilgrimage to Mecca (Hajj) at least once.
Chronicles of the Empire:
The first Emperor Sundiata expanded the borders, and secured the goldfields of Bambuk and Bure. Sundiata died after being either through being drowned or shot. See Sundiata’s expansion below:
Sundiata’s three sons Wali (Uli) , Wati, and Khalifa successively rose to power. Wali and Wati made some contributions, but Mansa Khalifa was apparently insane and killed his own people when he practiced archery. Khalifa was killed by Mansa Abu-Bakr, who was killed and succeeded by a freed slave-turned-military commander, named Mansa Sakura, briefly ending Sundiata’s lineage as Mansa of Mali.
Mansa Sakura is underrated, as he was the original African military strongman, that conquered the Gold city of Gao and brought stability to the empire. See graph below:
Unfortunately, Sakura was killed on his way back from his pilgrimage to Mecca. After him, the Keita line was restored by Mansa Qu, a descendant of Sundiata. Mansa Qu reportedly launched an expedition westward into the Atlantic Ocean, possibly in search of new trade routes, but the fleet never returned.
After Qu died, the famous Emperor, came into power - Mansa Musa or “Emperor Moses”. Musa expanded the empire's territory(conquering & enslaving 24 cities including the Tuareg Berber’s city of Timbuktu). See Musa’s expansion below:
With the help of his merchant class called the Jula, Mali used Timbuktu as a hub to exchange gold, kola nuts, and slaves for salt with the Arab, Berber and Tuareg caravanners. The trans-Sahara highways also became a conduit to spread Islam in West Africa and the Jula became converts.
In 1324, Musa undertook a renowned pilgrimage to Mecca with 500 slaves and gold. He demonstrated Mali's riches to the Arab world from Cairo to Mecca. He brought so much gold that it devalued the price of gold in Mamluk Egypt for a decade. Egyptians and Arabs chronicled this event which spread around Arabia and Europe about the riches of Mali.
That publicity stunt allowed him to bribe off skilled Arab bureaucrats, architects, and scholars to make Mali a religious and geopolitical center. The skilled Arab artisans made Timbuktu University, which is actually a collective term for three mosques - Sankore, Djinguereber, and Sidi Yahya. The Mosques became a hub of Islamic jurisprudence, astronomy, and math.
Timbuktu and Gao formed the core of Mali’s economy.Timbuktu became a massive cosmopolitan city with Arabs, Berbers and Africans living there, supporting a population of 100K people (enormous for the 14th century).
The Malinke people learned to read and write in Arabic and fused Islam with their local practices.
After Musa's death, his son, Mansa Magha, ruled for only four years before his death. His brother Mansa Suleyman ascended to power and ruled for two decades. During this time, Ibn Battuta traveled to Mali, and he was scandalized by how common nudity was in Mali:
Suleyman expanded Mali’s borders even more to encompass modern day Mali, Mauritania, Senegal, Guinea, parts of Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Northern Ivory Coast, North Burkina Faso, and Northern Ghana. See map below:
However, controlling this much land wasn’t sustainable. Suleyman faced rebellions from vassal states unhappy with Mali's slave raids and high tribute taxes. These states broke away, which was a problem since Mali heavily relied on slaves for its economy. Male slaves worked as miners, and female slaves tended fields and guarded caravans.
After Suleyman's death, Mali fell under more incompetent rulers like Kassa, Jata, Musa II, Maghan, and Sandaki, leading to civil war, power struggles, bankruptcy, and regicide. Arab Chronicler, Ibn Khaldun described this period as corrupt and tyrannical, with some rulers mere puppets of the military. Some leaders succumbed to sleeping sickness spread by tsetse flies.
Revolts followed from all directions: Tuareg Berbers seized Timbuktu and Walata in the north, the Mossi horsemen invaded from the south, and Fulani pastoralists encroached from the west. Meanwhile, regional states such as Ghana(Wagadou), Zafunu, Jollof, Songhai, Jenne, and Takrur asserted autonomy.
By the 1400s, the empire was in ruins. The Mandinka in Ghana and the Tuaregs declared independence.
In the 1400s, Portugal sailed on the coasts, but Malian coastal vassals killed the Europeans with poison arrows.
During this time, Europeans nor their limited supply of horses could handle diseases in Africa like the tsetse (set-see) fly or malaria. Back then the tsetse belt of Africa was known as “The White Man’s Grave”.
But Portugal learned from its failed incursions inland. By the mid-1400s, the Portuguese began bypassing North African middlemen, sailing along the West African coast to trade directly with Mali’s Senegambian vassals and other kingdoms such as the Akan, Yoruba, Edo, Kongo, Angola, Mozambique, and the Swahili states.
This maritime trade cut out the Arab and Berber merchants who had dominated the trans-Saharan routes. It slashed transport costs, avoided desert taxes, and weakened the caravan system that had sustained Mali’s economy. Portugal also began purchasing African captives directly, initiating an early form of the Atlantic slave trade.
West Africa Empire #3: Songhai (1430-1491)
The Songhai Empire arose in Gao, once a Malian vassal city. As Mali reduced to a rump kingdom, Songhai grew richer from trade and regained independence by 1430.
Under its early kings, Songhai conquered former Malian territories, defeated the Tuareg Berbers, and absorbed Timbuktu, Djenné, and Gao. The empire stretched across parts of Mali, Niger, Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Senegal, Gambia, and Guinea.
Songhai’s rulers transformed agriculture by replacing Mali’s semi-independent slave farmers with a state-run plantation system, where villages had to meet production quotas. The empire controlled the remaining trans-Saharan trade, exchanging gold, grain, kola nuts, and slaves for salt, copper, and Mediterranean goods.
After Sunni Ali’s death, his general Askia Muhammad Ture (r. 1493–1528) seized power and founded the Askia Dynasty. He built a vast cavalry army, promoted Islamic scholarship, and reformed administration, taxation, and irrigation systems. Songhai’s prosperity was visible in the Sankore Mosque of Timbuktu, a famed university that produced jurists, mathematicians, and astronomers.
The Moroccan traveler al-Hasan ibn Muhammad al-Wazzan, later known in Europe as Leo Africanus, described Songhai as a land full of “learned judges, doctors, and priests.” His Geographical Description of Africa became Europe’s main source on the empire.
Collapse under Morocco
In 1590, Sultan Ahmad al-Mansur sent an expedition of about 4,000 soldiers, led by his Spanish-born commander Judar Pasha, equipped with muskets and cannons. Despite being outnumbered five to one, the Moroccans crushed Songhai’s 20,000-strong army at the Battle of Tondibi (1591). The Songhai were technologically outmatched, they only had spears and swords.
The cities of Gao, Timbuktu, and Jenné were plundered, their scholars enslaved, and their gold seized. The once-great Songhai Empire disintegrated.
Look below to see the rise and fall of the Songhai. From the late 1400s to late 1500s, the Songhai over took Mali, only to be crushed by the Saadi Dynasty of Morocco:
Conclusion
This history shows how cyclical empires can be. Ghana, Mali, and Songhai were all once mighty powers that collapsed when confronted by stronger forces—whether North African invaders or internal decay. Even in the Middle Ages, West Africa was technologically behind North Africa. To find out what happened after Songhai collapsed, you can click here for part 2!
You are a fantastic writer…and researcher. The tsetse fly region “known as the white man’s grave”. You are a writing talent! MIT has writers?
Question: do you see modern China and the Belt and Road making changes? China is the world’s largest gold producer so I imagine China would be very involved in Mali.
I'm really enjoying this series. Two thoughts:
1) The cross Sahara trade in salt, gold and slaves was pretty old. Weren't the Garamintians running it when the Romans took over.
2) Have you read Shadow Empires about the political structures that form outside empires that mirror them in some aspects? For example, the shadow empires in China's west that were bought off by the Chinese emperors. In some ways our modern empires - the West, the USSR, China - had shadow empires in Africa. It's hard not to see parallels between the Romans treating with Germanic tribes or ancient China buying tribal loyalty by providing luxury goods and the modern IMF and other organizations sending food aid, weapons, debt relief and the like to polities in modern Africa. It's a very interesting book.