Bamako

Bamako, city, southwestern Mali, capital and largest city of the country, in the Capital District, on the navigable Niger River. It is the country's chief administrative, commercial, financial, manufacturing, and transportation center. The city is a trade center for shea-nut oil, peanuts, kapok, and cotton. Its economy has grown through the manufacturing of products such as motor vehicles, processed food, farm machinery, printed materials, metal goods, building supplies, and batteries. Bamako is linked by rail with Dakar, Senegal, on the Atlantic Ocean and is served by an international airport. Colleges of administration, engineering, medicine and dentistry, and teacher training are in the city, which also has several research institutes.

An important center of Muslim scholarship under the Mali Empire (circa 11th-15th century), Bamako was little more than a village when it was occupied by French troops under Joseph Simon Gallieni in 1883. It became the capital of the colony of French Sudan in 1908 and continued as the national capital of Mali in 1960. Population (2003 estimate) 1,264,000.