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/ 22 November 2006
It seems an unlikely place for Mali’s president to seek advice in times of crisis. A simple family compound in a bustling working class neighbourhood, where barefoot children compete with goats and belching mopeds for space to play on the dusty streets. But this is no ordinary family.
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/ 11 November 2006
A benign global economy, debt relief and progress with structural reforms give Africa a rare opportunity to accelerate economic growth, the deputy head of the IMF said on Friday. John Lipsky said the continent should seize the opportunity to push through more economic reform.
Tuareg rebels who attacked military camps in north-eastern Mali in May signed a peace agreement on Tuesday with government officials from Bamako, officials said. The agreement ”reaffirmed the territorial integrity, national unity as well as the republican and democratic principles and values of Mali”.
Two-time Grammy Award winner Ali Farka Toure of Mali, one of Africa’s most famous performers, died Tuesday after a long illness, Mali’s Culture Ministry announced. He was 67. Toure played a traditional Malian stringed instrument called the gurkel, and was best-known overseas for his 1995 collaboration with American guitarist Ry Cooder on Talking Timbuktu.
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/ 18 January 2006
With just a day to go before Africa’s first-ever World Social Forum (WSF) gets under way in Mali, attitudes towards the meeting appear somewhat mixed in the West African country. Some expect just to hear ”the same speeches”, while others want to ”show the world’s leading powers that their policies are unfair”.
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/ 12 January 2006
South African Giniel de Villiers, driving a Volkswagen, won the 11th stage in the Dakar Rally in Bamako, Mali, on Wednesday, and KTM’s Mali-born French rider Alain Duclos became the first competitor from black Africa to win a stage when he won the motorcycle section.
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/ 5 December 2005
Subsidies paid to cotton producers, especially in the United States, prompted an impassioned plea for a fairer deal on trade for Africa at a weekend Franco-African summit, where President Jacques Chirac lent his voice to the campaign. ”African farmers must receive a fair reward for their work,” Chirac said here, days before a key ministerial meeting in Hong Kong on global free trade negotiations.
Hundreds of Malian journalists and supporters marched on Tuesday through the streets of Bamako to demand the truth about the abduction and beating of local radio personality Hamidou Diarra. Marchers braved a light drizzle to head towards the communications ministry and present their protest at the ”barbaric” treatment of their colleague.
Mali’s President Amadou Toumani Toure announced a new national government on Sunday, days after the previous administration stepped down at his request. National Television ORTM reported late on Sunday that Toure had made his decision ”after a proposal by the Prime Minister” Usmane Issufi Maiga.
Tired but safe, 14 Europeans who spent several months as hostages in the Sahara desert after being seized in Algeria left Mali’s capital Bamako late Tuesday for Cologne on a German army ambulance plane.
The two men haggling over the fate of 14 European hostages held in the wilderness of the Malian desert both have a reputation as tough desert warriors responsible for attacks on government troops in their respective countries.
Local people in the north-east of Mali said on Wednesday that they had ”established contact” with the kidnappers of a group of Europeans seized in the Algerian Sahara in February and March.
African bluesman Ali Farka Toure is about to trade his guitar in for a hoe, the preferred tool of farmers in his desert hometown of Niafunke, and has vowed never again to tour outside of Mali.
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/ 26 December 2002
A convoy of nearly 900 Ivorian civilians is stranded near the rebel-held city of Man in western Ivory Coast because of fighting in the region, a humanitarian source told AFP.
The impoverished African nation of Mali voted in the second round of parliamentary elections on Sunday, but with most people ignoring calls to vote and leaving polling stations largely deserted.
The government of the vast, poverty-stricken west African state of Mali resigned without public explanation on Saturday after only four months in office.