January · This Day in Africa
January 11
2013 — Operation Serval in Mali
On January 11, 2013, French President François Hollande launched Operation Serval in Mali. He acted after Islamist militants, having seized the northern cities of Kidal, Gao, and Timbuktu, marched on Bamako, the capital. Within days, French airpower halted the advance and retook the north in a matter of weeks.
It was France's largest African operation since the Algerian War. The intervention ended in 2014, folded into the wider Operation Barkhane, but its legacy remains deeply contested in Mali and beyond. In 2022, French troops were expelled from the country they had entered as rescuers, a stark measure of how completely the welcome had worn away.
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