LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Mali: West Africa
built 261 days ago
The Sahelian nation of Mali is the site of several solar cooking projects. Desertification is of course an immense problem in this part of Africa. Only 10% of the land has any forest cover, and deforestation continues to occur. As in other areas, clearing land for agriculture and grazing is assumed to be the principal reason for the forests' decline, but there is ... recognition that over 70% of wood production is used for cooking. Solar cooking offers one way to stem this unwanted development in Mali.
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Mali is about the size of California and is located in interior West Africa with the Sahara desert to the north. Most people in Mali are engaged in subsistence agriculture. The climate is hot with barely enough rain to grow crops. The life expectancy is 48 years (US is 76 years) and the per capita GNP is $240 (US is $28,000).
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Though Mali is gone from this years edition of the Africa Cup of Nations, at least one member of the team will still be going back to their club with some hardware. On Friday, Mali and Sevilla striker Freddy Kanoute was named the 2007 CAF African Footballer of the Year. It’s too bad the award comes after a somewhat disappointing showing in Ghana, but Kanoute is deserving nonetheless, mainly because of how he has led Sevilla to an impressive year and took Mali successfully through ACN qualifying. It was a close race and Didier Drogba could have easily won, but in the end Kanoute edged him out. Read the rest of this entry »
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Most of Mali consists of low plains broken occasionally by rocky hills. The country has three natural regions. The southern region is a tropical grassland, or savanna, with occasional scattered trees. The central region is a semiarid belt known as the Sahel. The vegetation here consists of thorny plants and shrubs. The northern region lies within the Sahara, a vast desert that extends over northern Africa.
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Much of the land in Mali is flat, though in the east and the southeast are plateaus and a chain of small hills rising to elevations between 1,000 and 1,700 feet (300 to 500 meters). The northern third of Mali lies within the Sahara. An extension of the Futa Jallon mountains lies in the west.
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Mali is known as the jewel in the crown of West Africa; it is culturally and historically rich, but economically poor. You will be warmly welcomed, but do not be surprised by the "Third World" infrastructure and conditions.
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