The African state which, with independence in 1960, was called Mali was formed with the name of Sudan in French West Africa. Ancient Mali was populated and dominated by the Malinke or Manding. According to legend, the founder of the empire was Sundiata Keita (or Marj-Diada), author of the destruction of the residual power of Ghana, which would have reigned from 1230 to 1255. The dynasty converted to Islam and the main cities of Mali they became seats of Muslim art and culture, although the principle of matrilineal descent remained in force and, on the whole, the population continued to profess pagan cults. The compactness of the empire was shaken by the Tuareg who conquered Tombouctou (1435), by the Mossi and by the Songhai ; the last Sudanese dynasty centered in Gao was that of the Askia.

According to localcollegeexplorer, after a long period of semi-anarchy, the commercial and colonial penetration saw the French as protagonists; in 1880 a mission, commanded by J.-S. Gallieni, revealed the way to Niger, in 1883 a stronghold was established in Bamako, between 1888 and 1898 Timbuktu and Gao were conquered, giving life to French East Africa, which was centered on Dakar and Senegal. In 1958 a referendum established the V Republic in France and the Franco-African Community, to which Sudan joined. In 1960 Sudan and Senegal proclaimed their independence forming the Federation of Mali, but Senegal soon broke away from it and Sudan decided to keep the name of Mali for itself, proclaiming itself independent (22 September). The Union soudanaise and President Mali Keita started an experiment inspired by ‘African socialism’, allying themselves with Ghana and Guinea. But the exit from the franc zone caused serious economic problems which led to a military coup (November 19, 1968). General Mali

The military regime fell between 1990 and 1991. After a revolt that ended in blood, the military intervened by arresting the president himself. The establishment of power took place through a National Conference, the Constitution and the election of a president and the National Assembly (1992). AO Konaré, leader of the Alliance pour la démocratie en Mali-Parti panafricain pour la liberté, solidarité et la justice (ADEMA), took over the presidency. The profound fragility of alliances between parties, the suspension of financial aid from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank and, finally, in January 1994, the 50% devaluation of the CFA franc accompanied the failure of various governmental coalitions led by ADEMA. Despite the agreement of August 1994 with which the central government had signed the commitment to protect the rights of the Tuareg minority, only in the spring of 1995 did the most extremist groups abandon the armed struggle and the start of a real integration of the Tuareg. The first round of the legislative elections (April 1997) recorded a clear victory for ADEMA in a climate of unrest and irregularities. Later the results were invalidated. Nonetheless, the consultations for the election of the president, which took place in May, confirmed Konaré. Boycotted by major political forces and further postponed, the new general elections took place in a climate of serious political tension. While some prominent opposition figures were arrested, IB Keita formed a new government in September 1997 with the support of moderate opposition groups. But the political clash, social tensions, violence between ethnic groups in different areas of the country, as well as security problems on the northern borders, led Keita to resign from the post of prime minister to be replaced by Mali Sidibé. In 2002 he became president of AT Touré. A new government of ‘national unity’ was formed, a formula pursued until April 2004, when a new executive was formed. However, the attempts to improve the living conditions of the population were crushed by serious food crises. Furthermore, the problem of internal guerrillas persisted, powered by the Tuareg and Islamic fundamentalist groups. In April 2007 Touré won the presidential election again, obtaining his third and final term. In March 2012, a group of military deposed the president, accused of not being able to put down the insurrection organized in the previous January in the north-east of the country by the Tuareg, who demand political and cultural independence and self-determination. The military then formed a provisional government authority, the National Committee for the Restoration of Democracy and the State (CNRDR), while loyalists loyal to Touré – on whose fate little and contradictory news circulated – began to mobilize to organize a counter-point. On 10 April, after a complex negotiation between the military junta and Ecowas, the Constitutional Court ratified the presidential mandate entrusted to the President of the Parliament D. Traoré; a few days later the military and the Malian political class reached an agreement on the appointment of the prime minister of the transitional government, a post that was entrusted to CM Diarra. In May, the coup leaders and envoys of the Economic Community of West African States reached a final agreement on the transition period, which was supposed to last twelve months, but in December, after being arrested by the military, Diarra resigned.In January 2013 Traoré requested and obtained an air intervention by France, in agreement with the Ecowas, against the rebels in the north of the country, as a result of which many cities that had fallen into the hands of Islamic fundamentalists were freed. The presidential consultations held in August saw the victory of former prime minister IB Keita, elected in the second round with 77.6% of the votes against 22.3% of challenger S. Cissé, while the appointment as premier of Mali Mara (April 2014) contributed to strengthening the peacemaking commitment proffered by government forces, supported among other things by the military counter-terrorism mission since August 2014led by French Barkhane, with the aim of countering militant terrorism in the Sahelo-Saharan belt. In July 2014, negotiations for the pacification of the north of the country were opened in Algiers, the results of which were somewhat compromised by the lack of agreement on the type of autonomy to be granted to the northern territories; the opening of negotiations was postponed to September 2014, and a first agreement was produced in February 2015, contemplating an immediate truce of hostilities, the release of prisoners and participation in a committee for the safety and protection of civilians. In an internal socio-political framework, however, still tormented by ethnic conflicts and agitated on the international level by the escalation of the Islamic offensive against the West, jihadist cells carried out numerous attacks in the country over the following years, among the most serious of which was that of Bamako in November 2015. In a country still deeply agitated by the terrorist drift and in which the fracture of the social pact between political power and civilian population has worsened, in August 2018 Keita was reconfirmed in the presidential office with 67.1% of the votes against 32.8% of his historical opponent Cissé; unable to put an end to the violent conflicts that tear the country apart, in April 2019 the entire executive headed by SB Maïga, in office since December 2017, resigned, and President Keïta assigned the outgoing Minister of Economy and finances B. Cissé the task of forming a new government. The first round of the legislative elections held in March 2020 with an extremely low turnout (35.7%) due to the Coronavirus emergency made it possible to assign only 17 seats of the 147 seats in the National Assembly, 14 of which were awarded by the party in power Rassemblement pour le Mali (RPM), followed by the main opposition party, the Union pour la République et la Démocratie (URD), which won three seats. In the following months, political tensions and street protests by a coalition of political opponents, religious leaders and members of civil society intensified, leading to a military coup in August 2020, which forced the President Keita to step down and dissolve Parliament. The new leader of the country was the self-proclaimed land army colonel A. Goïta, who in the following month, after the election of Bah Ndaw as president of the transition authorities, assumed the post of vice president; in May 2021 the politician led a new coup, arresting Bah Ndaw and the interim premier Mali Ouane and re-imposing military control on the civilian government.