***Mali was the seat of a great medieval empire and they were mining gold back then.***
You can bet they didn’t pay union wages to their miners! Most likely castrated blacks from the south.
Well, as Hobbes observed, back then life was nasty, brutish and short.
Thirty years ago, this was the largest gold mine in Mali:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOFDveG8nws