While the shortest distance from the tripoint with Guinea to the tripoint with Burkina Faso is only 270 km, the Côte d’Ivoire–Mali boundary twists and turns for 640 km between those two points, mostly following rivers. The boundary was originally an internal boundary within French West Africa and was inherited by Côte d’Ivoire and Mali upon independence in 1960. The original French internal boundary was only vaguely described, and there have been no reports of a more detailed delimitation or demarcation of the line since it became an international boundary.