AMAPISE

                Malian Association for the Support and Promotion of Endogenous Know-How Initiatives                                                                                      

                                                                                                                                                                                         GENESIS AND HISTORICAL FOUNDATIONS (2012-2014)

                        2014

                       MARCH

        Birth of AMAPISE

In April 2012, Timbuktu — a millennia-old city, a jewel of world heritage — fell into the hands of armed groups. During nine months of occupation, until the city's liberation by Operation Serval in January 2013, two-thirds of Malian territory escaped the authority of the State. This was one of the deepest crises in Mali's contemporary history.

Beyond the heritage destruction that struck international opinion, it was the entire economic and social fabric of the region that collapsed. More than half the population was displaced, forced to reach southern cities whose most basic codes of survival were entirely unfamiliar to them.

The return, once the city was liberated, was not a simple relief. Artisans, in particular, came back to find neither their tools, nor their workshops, nor their clients. But the deepest wound was not only material: it was the social fabric itself that had been fractured.

It was from this observation that AMAPISE was born in 2014 — not as an emergency humanitarian response, but as a long-term answer to an essential question: how does one rebuild a social identity once it has been broken?

History has since vindicated this founding intuition: several years later, major international actors themselves invested in reviving Timbuktu's craftsmanship as an explicit tool for reducing community violence, validating a logic that AMAPISE had already implemented with far more modest means.

                                       THE FOUR PILLARS OF ACTION

🛡️ PILLAR II

Child Protection, Traditional Mediation and Social Cohesion                                                                                                    Carried by the Réseau EnfanceAfrique.org, this pillar extends the founding ambition of mending the community's social fabric.

🔬 PILLAR I

The association's academic anchoring, notably through its president's scientific affiliation with international institutions.

THE RÉSEAU ENFANCEAFRIQUE.ORG — AMAPISE'S SCIENTIFIC PROGRAMME

The Réseau EnfanceAfrique.org is not a structure separate from AMAPISE: it is its scientific and advocacy programme, through which the association deploys its second pillar across West Africa.

                                               « AMAPISE carries the institution.                                                                                                              The Réseau EnfanceAfrique.org carries the science. »

GOVERNANCE AND OPERATIONS

AMAPISE is administered by an Executive Bureau and a Supervisory Committee, elected by the General Assembly of its members. The Founding President has provided the association's scientific and institutional direction since 2014.                                 

This collegial governance still embodies, today, the spirit of social reconstruction that presided over the association's birth. Just as Timbuktu's communities had to relearn, after 2013, how to decide and act together, AMAPISE made collective deliberation an operating principle, not a mere statutory formality.                                               

This commitment to shared governance extends into the scientific bodies of the Réseau EnfanceAfrique.org as well, where an International Scientific Council now accompanies the leadership in its research orientations.

TRANSPARENCY ON OUR LEGAL REGULARIZATION

AMAPISE, founded in 2014 (Registration Certificate No. 032/P.C.T: 2014), initiated in 2026 a statutory amendment process aimed at formally broadening its legal purpose to the network's four current pillars and regularizing its name. This process, adopted by an Extraordinary General Assembly on 15 August 2026 in Timbuktu, is currently being filed with the competent authorities.

                                 JOIN US, SUPPORT US

Twelve years after its birth from the rubble of a crisis, AMAPISE continues to carry the conviction that founded it: that no reconstruction is durable if it ignores the social bond that unites a community to itself. Today, this conviction is seeking new allies.

                                                                     Contact us: contact@enfanceafrique.org — 00223 93 88 55 69