Countries

Mali

A landlocked country in West Africa, crossed by the Niger River. Timbuktu and Djenné were centres of trade and Islamic learning in the Mali Empire, whose 14th-century ruler Mansa Musa is famed for his wealth. Djenné's Great Mosque is the world's largest mud-brick building.

A mud-brick mosque in Timbuktu, Mali, its buttressed walls studded with projecting wooden beams, under a deep blue sky

Timbuktu

Photo: Jeanne Menjoulet from Paris, France, CC BY 2.0

A vertical tricolour in the Pan-African colours green, gold and red, adopted in 1961. The earlier 1959 version carried a black human figure, the kanaga, in the gold band.

How it has changed

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