ABSTRACT
Mali is a landlocked country in the semiarid interior of West Africa. Its gross national product for most of the 1980s was US $1.0 billion annually, translating into $140 per capita. This makes Mali one of the poorest countries in the world. A primarily agricultural country, it had an annual operating budget of $135 million during the late 1980s. The Republic of Mali covers 478,767 square miles. Shaped like an hourglass, Mali shares common borders with seven other countries, Algeria in the north Guinea and Ivory Coast in the south, Burkina Faso and Niger in the east, and Mauritania and Senegal in the west. Mali's modern borders are a result of seventy years of French colonial rule. Mali is a flat country, consisting largely of plains and plateaus. This flat relief is accented in a few places by hills and mountains. Southern Mali contains hills that are an extension of the Futa Djallon highlands of Guinea to the west.
