Koulikoro Region

Koulikoro Region surrounds Bamako in a protective agricultural buffer zone, producing cereals, fruits, and vegetables that feed the capital's 4.2 million residents. This peri-urban agricultural belt demonstrates classic source-sink dynamics in reverse: Koulikoro supplies food resources that flow into the Bamako consumption sink. The region's proximity to the capital creates economic advantages—better road infrastructure, market access, government services—that peripheral regions lack. However, security has deteriorated even in this near-Bamako zone: the internal route between Bamako and Ségou faces growing threats with attacks and kidnappings on the rise, demonstrating how insurgent networks have expanded beyond northern strongholds into central Mali. The region includes portions of the Niger River valley that form Mali's most productive agricultural zone between Bamako and Mopti. Cotton production for export represents colonial-era path dependence: French administration organized cotton cultivation for textile industries, and this crop pattern persists despite limited local processing. The region's economic investment code incentives (five to eight year tax exemptions, reduced energy prices) have failed to attract manufacturing away from Bamako, demonstrating how policy incentives cannot overcome agglomeration effects that concentrate business activity in existing hubs.