Mali: A lesson in how conflict takes food out of people’s mouth
Women pick cotton in a field outside Kita. As the export of cotton, one of Mali’s main sources of income, is becoming more complicated, so is food security, with terrorists setting rice fields on fire and scaring away farmers. PHOTO | FLORENT VERGNES | AFP
Mali once had it good. Mansa Musa, the great ninth mansa of the Mali Empire, and considered the world’s richest man ever, has roots there. It was West Africa’s second largest exporter of gold after Ghana.
The good times look so far away. There has been a food crisis since 2016. And to compound its situation, terrorist attacks have multiplied in the centre of the country, in the Mopti region. With the heavy toll of civilian and military victims and damage to farmers' fields, it has been plunged into food insecurity. In Macina and Dogofry, the damage caused by this crisis is enormous, even if the causes are not the same.
