Kita, Mali

Kita is a town and urban commune in western Mali and the capital of the Kita Cercle in the Kayes Region. It lies on the eastern slope of Mount Kita, called Kita-kulu in Bambara, a hill known for its caves and rock paintings. The town sits on the Dakar-Niger Railway and is the largest transit hub between Bamako, 180 kilometres away, and Kayes, 330 kilometres away. Today it is known for its music, for an annual Roman Catholic pilgrimage and as a processing centre for the cotton and peanut growing region around it. Kita became a commune of average exercise in November 1955 and a commune of full exercise on 2 March 1966, and the town grew in the 1990s around the cotton industry, which has since declined. The Malian author Massa Makan Diabaté set his Kouta Trilogy in a fictionalized version of Kita.