Bamako

Bamako lies on the Niger River on the edge of the Manding country, where the fertile valley gave its early people a rich food supply and the trade in gold, ivory, kola nuts and salt. By the eleventh century the empire of Ghana dominated the area, and later the Mali Empire.

The kafu, the small chiefdom, of Bamako was founded about 1650 by the Niare family, perhaps linked to a Soninke man named Bamba Sanogo. The Toure and Drave families, mostly clerics and merchants, were also prominent in the early town, which was a client of the Bambara Empire of Segou. When the Scottish explorer Mungo Park came in 1806 he estimated that Bamako had 6,000 inhabitants, a size like many commercial towns across West Africa at the time.