Another of Mali's festivals -- The Festival in the Desert outside Timbuktu - once attracted thousands of visitors, but it has not been held since 2012, when jihadists entered the ancient city.

Listeners swayed as the celebrated Malian duo Amadou and Mariam sang from a stage on the banks of the Niger River at an annual festival coloured this year by political shifts roiling West Africa.Tens ...

In the 1230s, a man called Sundiata Keita incorporated a series of smaller kingdoms into the Mali Empire. The empire was central to several key trading routes, and with the support of a well ...