Assimi Goïta

Goïta was born in Bamako, the son of a military officer and a member of the Minianka people; he trained at the Prytanée Militaire de Kati and the Joint Military School in Koulikoro, graduating in 2002, and received further training in the United States, France and Germany. ¹ He served as a colonel in the Autonomous Special Forces Battalion, commanding Malian special forces in the centre of the country during the jihadist insurgency. ¹

In August 2020 Goïta led the National Committee for the Salvation of the People, the junta that overthrew President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta, and became Mali's de facto leader. ^{1 2} Under international pressure he transferred power to a civilian-led interim government, serving as interim vice president under President Bah Ndaw from September 2020. ¹ On 24 May 2021, after a dispute over a cabinet reshuffle, he seized power from Ndaw in a second coup, and the constitutional court declared him interim president. ¹

During his rule Mali cut military ties with France and allied itself with Russia, and in January 2024 Goïta announced Mali's withdrawal from ECOWAS; with the military leaders of Burkina Faso and Niger he formed the Alliance of Sahel States, which he led from 2024 to 2025. ¹ Elections were indefinitely postponed, and in July 2025 the National Transitional Council granted him a five-year term, renewable without an election; he has accordingly been Mali's sixth president since 2025. ¹ In July 2021 a knife-wielding man attacked him while he was praying at the Grand Mosque of Bamako during the Eid al-Adha festivities; he was unharmed and the attacker was arrested. ¹

The English article states in its Personal life section that Goïta is Muslim, and describes his prayer at Bamako's Grand Mosque; the Arabic article says nothing about his religion, and Wikidata carries the single value Islam. ^{1 2 3} No text names a school or branch — the Sunni reading exists only as an English-article category filing — so the museum records his faith as unknown and preserves the readings in the data file.

• The defined source entities cited above, recorded in data/source/.