Qualla: Gouina Falls https://qualla.com/gouina-falls en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:09 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/e/f/2/p/gouina-falls-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Gouina Falls https://qualla.com/gouina-falls Gouina Falls: Introduction https://qualla.com/gouina-falls/ Photo credit Jacques Taberlet, CC BY-SA 3.0. In the dry season you could almost walk it. The Sénégal River creeps over the ledge at barely a dozen cubic meters a second, and the rock shows through like the bones of the place. Then the rains come. By the height of the wet season the same falls carry more than two thousand four hundred cubic meters every second, a roaring wall of brown water five hundred meters across plunging sixteen meters into the gorge below. Locals call Gouina the Niagara of Mali, and for a few months each year the comparison earns itself.

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Image: Jacques Taberlet | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/e/f/2/p/gouina-falls-wp/ef2p-gouina-falls-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Gouina Falls: Where the River Turns North https://qualla.com/gouina-falls/ Photo credit Jacques Taberlet, CC BY-SA 3.0. Gouina sits on the upper Sénégal in the Kayes Region of western Mali, downstream of the town of Bafoulabé and upstream of Diamou. Just before the falls, the river squeezes through the Talari Gorges and bends to run north toward the dry country and, eventually, the Atlantic. The s...

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Image: Jacques Taberlet | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/e/f/2/p/gouina-falls-wp/ef2p-gouina-falls-where-the-river-turns-north.mp3 0:06 2 full Gouina Falls: A River of Two Seasons https://qualla.com/gouina-falls/ Photo credit Jacques Taberlet, CC BY-SA 3.0. Few waterfalls change as dramatically through the year as Gouina. The flow can swing from twelve or thirteen cubic meters per second in the dry months to roughly twenty-four hundred at the peak of the rains, a difference of nearly two hundredfold. In the dry season the cataract b...

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Image: Jacques Taberlet | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/e/f/2/p/gouina-falls-wp/ef2p-gouina-falls-a-river-of-two-seasons.mp3 0:06 3 full Gouina Falls: Taming the Thunder https://qualla.com/gouina-falls/ Photo credit Jacques Taberlet, CC BY-SA 3.0. A waterfall this powerful was always going to attract engineers. Mali and the Senegal River Basin Development Authority spent decades studying the river's potential, and in December 2013 construction began on the 140-megawatt Gouina Hydroelectric Plant. It joined a chain of works...

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Image: Jacques Taberlet | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/e/f/2/p/gouina-falls-wp/ef2p-gouina-falls-taming-the-thunder.mp3 0:06 4 full Gouina Falls: The Spectacle and the Trade-Off https://qualla.com/gouina-falls/ Photo credit Jacques Taberlet, CC BY-SA 3.0. There is a quiet tension at Gouina now, the kind that follows every dam. The falls that gave the place its name and its nickname share their ledge with the machinery that harnesses them. For the towns of the Kayes Region, the electricity matters: reliable power is scarce in this ...

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Image: Jacques Taberlet | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/e/f/2/p/gouina-falls-wp/ef2p-gouina-falls-the-spectacle-and-the-trade-off.mp3 0:06 5 full