Feeding the World : agriculture in Mali

General data on Mali

Surface Area	1,240,192 sq. km
Population (millions)	9.7
Population Growth	3.2 %
Urban Population	27%
Density (1995)	8 inh/ sq. km
GDP (1994) Billions	US $ 1.94
GDP per Capita	US $ 200
Currency	CFA Franc
National Budget	27% of GDP
Human Development Indicator	0.229
HDI Ranking (out of 174 countries)	171

Agriculture in Mali

The Malian economy is basically agricultural. Harvest levels depend almost entirely on changes in climate and on floods of the Niger and its tributaries. In 1995 73% of the working population was employed in agriculture and contributed 44% of the GDP. Most of the production is by small farmers engaged in subsistence farming. The main food crops are millet, rice, sorghum, and corn. Peanuts, cotton and sugar cane are produced for export. Livestock rearing is also very important.

Droughts make vegetation rare in Mali. With rapid population growth, the increasing need for fire wood has led to large scale deforestation.

Source : Université de Columbia

Mali from the sky by Yann Arthus-Bertrand

Go on YAB official website to discover some photos (2, 6, 13) of agriculture in Mali.

Description of Mali

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.

The topography is mostly low plateaux and basins with occasional rocky hills.

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.
  

Source : FAO

See maps about Mali