Background

Once home to one of Africa’s greatest empires, Mali is a vast landlocked country nestled between the Sahara desert and six other countries in West Africa. With its rich history, diverse cultures and traditions, Mali is a capital of music, art, dance and Islamic study. It is also one of the poorest countries in the world.

In 2005, life expectancy for Mali’s 13 million people is 48. Women have a one in 16 chance of dying in childbirth during their lives and one child in five will die before reaching its fifth birthday. Only 19 per cent of Malians can read and write in a country with some of the worst education rates in sub-Saharan Africa.

In spite of its reserves of gold and its status as one of the world’s biggest cotton producers, poor investment and unfair trade rules mean that Mali is heavily dependant on foreign aid and remittances sent home from Malians working abroad.

Wealth and natural resources are also very unequally distributed across the country. Bordering to the North on the fringe of the Sahara desert in the Sahel region of West Africa, 65 per cent of Mali’s land is desert or semi-desert.

Malians living in the most marginalised Northern regions of the country suffer from recurring periods of drought and widespread food shortages.

Bad land management policies are a constant source of tension between the farmers and nomadic herders who struggle to share the increasingly meagre resources of the Northern regions. In the early 1990s, this tension overspilled into bloody conflict with the region’s nomadic Tuaregs leading a rebellion to demand greater recognition of their culture, language and right to land.

After several years of conflict, a shaky peace has finally been restored in the North of Mali. However, life is still a daily struggle for the majority of the population in this part of the country and things are getting worse. Global climate change and desertification are leading to more frequent periods of drought, resulting in chronic food shortages. With each difficult year, people are becoming increasingly more vulnerable to malnutrition and less able to survive the long hunger periods.

In 2005, the biblical locust invasion and erratic rainfall that devastated pastureland and crops in the summer of 2004, coupled with a massive increase in cereal prices in the most marginalised areas, pushed people beyond the limit of survival. The result was a massive food crisis, leaving an estimated 1.2 million people facing starvation.

Oxfam in Mali

Oxfam started work in Mali in the late 1960s. Our programme expanded during the trans-Saharan drought of 1983-84 to provide emergency relief to some of the most vulnerable people in the North of the country.

During the Tuareg rebellion in the early 1990s, Oxfam played an instrumental role in the peace building process, organizing meetings between the conflicting sides to encourage discussion and the resolution of problems.

Work with pastoralists

Today, Oxfam’s work in Mali is still primarily focused in the Northern region of Gao, with nomadic livestock herders, or pastoralists.

Representing ten per cent of Mali’s population, pastoralists are some of the most marginalised and vulnerable people in the country. They survive in dry, arid areas by moving with their herds in search of pasture and water.

However, areas of pasture are becoming increasingly scarce as the desert advances from the North and more land is used for farming.

Many pastoralists are being forced to abandon their traditional livelihoods, settling with their families to eke a living from small-scale farming and animal rearing. With every recurring crisis, more nomadic herders lose their livelihoods and this thousand year old culture is threatened with extinction.

Our partners

Oxfam works with three local partners in Gao, ADESAH (Association for Local Development in the Sahel), GARI (Intadeyne Rural Craftsmen Collective) and Tassaght (the ‘link’ in Tamacheq) to support sustainable livelihoods, girl’s education and conflict reduction.

Food crisis response

They were the first to sound the alarm at signs of an impending food crisis in the autumn of 2004. Oxfam responded quickly, carrying out food security evaluations in August and November 2004, and launching initial emergency activities by December 2004.

By May 2005, the situation had developed into a full-scale crisis. Oxfam responded, up scaling our emergency response with a £1.4m programme reaching over 50,000 of the most vulnerable people.

Humanitarian programme in Mali

Today, Oxfam continues to support pastoral and semi-pastoral communities in the Northern region of Gao with immediate assistance to have access to food.

This work links with our long term work where we are helping pastoralists to:

• rebuild their wealth and livelihoods,
• to improve their access to basic services like healthcare and education,
• to reduce conflict,
• and finally to strengthen their capacity to advocate for national policies that take their needs into account.

West Africa Regional Pastoral Programme
Cross Border Pastoralist Education
West Africa Regional Conflict Transformation Programme

Campaigning

The Mali programme also plays a very important role in the Oxfam International Make Trade Fair campaign with our programme working with cotton producers in the West of the country.

Make Trade Fair cotton campaign

Last updated: March 06