Siguiri has never been entirely sure where to stand. The Niger floods, and richer farmland appears on one bank or another, and so the town has shifted across the years, settling and resettling on both sides of the river in search of solid ground and good soil. Oral tradition reaches back even further, holding that Nyamagan, the eldest son of Sundiata Keita, the founder of the Mali Empire, once settled and ruled in this country. Whether legend or memory, the claim ties Siguiri to the deep Mande past, to the empire whose griots still sing of its founding.

North and northwest of the city, along the Tinkisso River, lies the Bouré goldfield. This was no minor deposit. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, Bouré rose to replace the older field of Bambouk as a principal source of West African gold, feeding the trans-Saharan trade that carried the metal north across the desert to the Mediterranean world. The gold of fields like these underwrote the legendary wealth of Mali, the kind of riches that, when a Malian emperor crossed Egypt with his caravan, were said to have disrupted markets for years. The seams have never been exhausted. Mining continues across the region, both in industrial operations and in the hand-dug pits of artisanal miners, a high-risk livelihood that draws workers from across the area.

Gold mined nearby becomes gold worked in town. Siguiri is known for its goldsmiths, artisans who turn the raw metal into the jewelry and ornaments prized across the region, carrying on a craft as old as the trade itself. The city's other great export is music. Siguiri is the birthplace of Sekouba Bambino Diabaté, the celebrated Guinean singer whose voice carried Mande tradition onto international stages. In a culture where the griot, the hereditary musician and keeper of history, holds a place of honor, producing a singer of that stature is its own kind of wealth.

The modern shape of Siguiri owes much to the colonial moment. In 1888 the French built a fort here, planting their authority on the strategic river crossing as they pushed inland up the Niger. The fort marked Siguiri's role as a node in a far larger system, a point where French ambition met the older trade in gold and goods. Today the city is the capital of Siguiri Prefecture in the Kankan Region, its airport linking it to the wider country. The savanna climate brings a hard line between wet and dry seasons, the river swelling and shrinking with the year, as the buffalo's old country goes on yielding its quiet, enduring fortune.