Gao was once the centre of the universe.
It was from here, on the sandy shores of the Niger River in what is now north-eastern Mali, that the Songhai Empire ruled West Africa in the 16th century, its domain stretching from Nigeria to Timbuktu, from the great riverbank towns of the Niger River to the Aïr Mountains deep in the Sahara. Within its borders were the richest gold deposits in the world and its emperors once marched across the desert to Mecca bearing 300,000 gold pieces.
Such largesse was nothing when compared to the Songhai Empire’s predecessor, the Empire of Mali, whose kings set out to search for the Americas 200 years before Columbus. Ruling West Africa for almost 500 years, the emperors of ancient Mali transformed Timbuktu into a city of legend with vast universities and streets paved with gold. Their extravagance caused the world gold price to slump for almost 20 years.
But Gao is now little more than an impoverished and dusty frontier town 350km beyond Timbuktu which has become a byword for the end of the earth.
As the leaders of the world’s richest and most powerful countries gathered in St Petersburg, a few hundred activists were meeting in Gao to hold what they called ‘the Poor People’s Summit’. Rather than flying to the conference first-class and meeting in lavish banquet halls, participants at the Gao summit travelled overland along rutted roads and by public buses for up to 1000km to reach the summit which was held in an abandoned secondary school.
That it should be Mali which hosted the summit was appropriate. According to the UN, Mali is the fourth poorest country in the world. Almost one-third of Malians suffer from malnutrition, while 90 per cent of the population survives, barely, on less than US$2 a day. Most Malians die before their 48th birthday.
That it should be West Africa that should hold such a summit is similarly apt. Sierra Leone, Niger and Burkina Faso – the latter two are neighbours of Mali – are the only countries who fare worse than Mali on the UN’s Human Development Index. Representatives from these countries also attended the Gao summit.
Put simply, the land once so rich it could afford to de-value gold is now the poorest place on earth.
Although more than half of Malian territory is consumed by the Sahara Desert, Mali is not without