ABSTRACT
In late 1987 and early 1988, the Projet pour la Reinstallation des Populations de Manantali, in collaboration with the Malian administration and the national political party, established committees of health, sanitation, and water point maintenance in each new village. Prior to dam construction, the people of Manantali, the Malinke of the Bafing river lived in one of the most remote inhabited areas of Mali, with an overall population density of less than five per square kilometre. The historical limits of the political jurisdiction of the Bafing Malinke are reached approximately 25 kms north, that is downstream, of the dam site. The formal objective of the Manantali Resettlement Project, however, was uniquely the replacement of existing resources and replication of the previous standard of living. Peter Warshall says that major environmental damage has been done by the construction of the Manantali dam, including the destruction of an important Borassus palm forest in the reservoir area below the dam.
