As French troops go in to the West African country of Mali, we thought it might be useful to provide teachers with a bit of background information about the country and the current situation.
The situation is constantly changing but the following news articles give useful background to the current crisis.
- BBC News - the key players
- Guardian - interactive showing history and current issues
- Guardian - guide to the conflict
- Guardian Teacher Network - resources on Mali
- CNN - Six reasons events in Mali matter
- National Geographic - Roots of the Mali crisis
- Al Jazeera English - Interactive - Mali speaks
Some tasters of Mali's history and culture
From about from the 13th to the 17th centuries AD Mali was a very wealthy kingdom, with the city of Timbuktu a major centre of trade and learning.- British Museum - African civilisations - with teaching resources on the Kingdom of Mali
- National Geographic – photos from Timbuktu - featuring many of the old manuscripts that are kept in the city.
- Smithsonian Museum - discovering Malian mudcloth - bogolan or "mud cloth" is cotton dyed into traditional patterns with fermented mud. It is important to Malian culture and identity.
- Our Africa website from SOS Children - Mali - lots of useful background information suitable for school students, including culture, history, music and daily life.
- Mali is famous for its buildings made of dried mud or adobe. One of the most well-known is the great mosque of Djenné (pictured above), which is considered to be the largest mud building in the world. You can see more images of Mali's mud buildings from this Google image search on Mali mud architecture.
- The RGS website has some teaching resources useful for GCSE Geography, based around the issues of migration and rapid urbanisation in Mali and the changeover from mud buildings to concrete ones.
- Guardian - Mali's magical music - a range of musicians pick their favourite Malian music tracks, with links to a few video clips.
- BBC Radio 3 World Music Archive - scroll down to Mali to find some recordings
- Oxfam's blog has coverage of a visit to Mali by Damon Albarn, including video and audio clips.
- Toumani Diabate - one of the best-known Malian kora players, hailing from a long family tradition.
- Tinariwen - a band describing themselves as "poet-guitarists and soul rebels" from the Kel Tamashek or 'Touareg' peoples of the Southern Sahara desert.
