Little French Spoken in Mali

QuebecMali.wordpress.com:

While the official language of administration and commerce in Mali is French, the vast majority of local life takes place in the local tongue of Bombara (and outside of Bamako, as we soon learned, very little French is spoken at all)- so we Canadians relied heavily on our Malian counterparts to guide us around, negotiate prices for us at the market, and help us avoid making an inordinate amount of faux pas those first few days