Bandiagara Region

Bandiagara Region is an administrative region of Mali that was created from the division of Mopti Region, and its capital is the town of Bandiagara. The region includes large parts of Dogon country and is particularly known for the Cliff of Bandiagara, which UNESCO has listed as a mixed cultural and natural World Heritage Site since 1989. It lies in central Mali, south of the Niger Bend, borders Burkina Faso to the south and covers 24,850 square kilometres, with a landscape shaped by the Dogon Plateau, sandy plains and the Bandiagara escarpments. A separate region had been envisaged by the administrative reform of 2012 and was confirmed by Law No. 2023-006 of 13 March 2023. The region is divided into nine cercles and comprises 30 arrondissements, 53 communes and 1,024 villages and fractions. Its name derives from an archaic Dogon term meaning a large wooden eating bowl, the kind made by the blacksmith caste for offering food during ceremonies. In recent years the security crisis in central Mali has severely disrupted agriculture, herding, markets and tourism.