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The Sankarani River is a tributary of the
Niger River The Niger River ( ; ) is the main river of West Africa, extending about . Its drainage basin is in area. Its source is in the Guinea Highlands in south-eastern Guinea near the Sierra Leone border. It runs in a crescent shape through Mal ...
. Flowing northward from the
Guinea Highlands The Guinea Highlands is a densely forested mountainous plateau extending from central Guinea through northern Sierra Leone and Liberia to western Ivory Coast. The highlands include a number of mountains, ranges and plateaus, including the Fouta D ...
of the
Fouta Djallon Fouta Djallon ( ff, 𞤊𞤵𞥅𞤼𞤢 𞤔𞤢𞤤𞤮𞥅, Fuuta Jaloo; ar, فوتا جالون) is a highland region in the center of Guinea, roughly corresponding with Middle Guinea, in West Africa. Etymology The Fulani people call the r ...
in
Guinea Guinea ( ),, fuf, 𞤘𞤭𞤲𞤫, italic=no, Gine, wo, Gine, nqo, ߖߌ߬ߣߍ߫, bm, Gine officially the Republic of Guinea (french: République de Guinée), is a coastal country in West Africa. It borders the Atlantic Ocean to the we ...
, it crosses into southern
Mali Mali (; ), officially the Republic of Mali,, , ff, 𞤈𞤫𞤲𞥆𞤣𞤢𞥄𞤲𞤣𞤭 𞤃𞤢𞥄𞤤𞤭, Renndaandi Maali, italics=no, ar, جمهورية مالي, Jumhūriyyāt Mālī is a landlocked country in West Africa. Ma ...
, where it joins the Niger approximately upstream of
Bamako Bamako ( bm, ߓߡߊ߬ߞߐ߬ ''Bàmakɔ̌'', ff, 𞤄𞤢𞤥𞤢𞤳𞤮 ''Bamako'') is the capital and largest city of Mali, with a 2009 population of 1,810,366 and an estimated 2022 population of 2.81 million. It is located on the Niger Rive ...
, the capital of Mali. It forms part of the Ivory Coast-Guinea and Guinea–Mali borders. The Sankarani River watershed, traditionally well suited to crops and rich in iron and gold, covers some , two-thirds of which are in Guinea, where it is joined by three
tributaries A tributary, or affluent, is a stream or river that flows into a larger stream or main stem (or parent) river or a lake. A tributary does not flow directly into a sea or ocean. Tributaries and the main stem river drain the surrounding drain ...
: the Kourai, Yeremou and Dion Rivers. In Mali, it flows into the
Niger River The Niger River ( ; ) is the main river of West Africa, extending about . Its drainage basin is in area. Its source is in the Guinea Highlands in south-eastern Guinea near the Sierra Leone border. It runs in a crescent shape through Mal ...
upstream of Bamako near the village of
Kourouba Kourouba is a village and rural commune in the Cercle of Kati in the Koulikoro Region of south-western Mali. The commune covers an area of 245 km2 and includes 5 villages.. In the 2009 census the commune had a population of 8,248. The vil ...
. Construction of the
Sélingué Dam The Sélingué Dam is an embankment dam with a gravity section located in the Sikasso Region, on the Sankarani River, one of the affluents of the Niger River. It is an important center of energy production in Mali surpassed only by the Manantali ...
began in 1980, with the goal of supplying Bamako with electricity; it was inaugurated on 13 December 1982. It and the accompanying hydroelectric plant comprised the largest development project in Malian history up to that time. The plant has the capacity to produce 44.8 million kilowatt-hours of electricity. An irrigation scheme was also implemented, initially to compensate people who had to be moved; it covered , split up among 1943 plot holders, or . The Sankanarni has a discontinuous
floodplain A floodplain or flood plain or bottomlands is an area of land adjacent to a river which stretches from the banks of its channel to the base of the enclosing valley walls, and which experiences flooding during periods of high discharge.Goudi ...
over a distance of in Guinea. The river banks support
gallery forest A gallery forest is one formed as a corridor along rivers or wetlands, projecting into landscapes that are otherwise only sparsely treed such as savannas, grasslands, or deserts. The gallery forest maintains a more temperate microclimate above th ...
s, though the Selingue Dam's reservoir covered many of them. As of 2008, more than a thousand fishermen caught "between 400 and 1000 kg/day in peak season and 10 to 50 kg/day in low season (March to May)" in the section of the river between the dam and the junction with the Niger. At the height of its power, from the 13th to 16th centuries CE, the capital of the ancient
Mali Empire The Mali Empire (Manding: ''Mandé''Ki-Zerbo, Joseph: ''UNESCO General History of Africa, Vol. IV, Abridged Edition: Africa from the Twelfth to the Sixteenth Century'', p. 57. University of California Press, 1997. or Manden; ar, مالي, Māl� ...
is believed to have been at Niani, on the banks of the Sankarani.


References

{{coord, 12, 00, 15, N, 8, 18, 46, W, region:ML_type:waterbody_source:kolossus-dewiki, display=title Rivers of Guinea Rivers of Mali Tributaries of the Niger River International rivers of Africa Rivers of Ivory Coast Guinea–Ivory Coast border Guinea–Mali border Border rivers Ramsar sites in Guinea