It is interesting to be in a country with 11 national languages besides the official language, and these are only the biggest language groups. So many languages makes French actually much more neutral than one would think at first regard. I haven’t been studying Bambara as much as I wanted. Bambara is, surprise suprise, the language of the Bambara, comprising 30% of the population, and Mali’s lingua franca spoken by about 80%.
Many think learning languages is difficult. I think it isn’t. If you know how to read and don’t feel too scared to start with actually practicing the very little knowledge you have when there is an opportunity it’s not so difficult, as others have come to realise. The problem with many African languages is, however, that there isn’t actually a lot to read. And reading is one of the best ways to start when learning a language... Though here I must confess that I haven’t checked out Bamako’s bookstores yet, in which I hope to find some bilingual French-Bambara books.
Wikipedia is a perfect tool for learning languages. Not only can you look up an article - which should be much quicker, and actually can be much quicker thanks to Wik2dict - you can also contribute to Wikipedia while learning! I think a great way to learn a language is to actually write - once you reach a sufficient level to actually use a dictionary and conjugation system you can start trying conveying your ideas in that language, by writing emails with native speakers and even by actually creating new information! If native speakers can understand what you wrote, they will be tempted to correct your hair rising grammar and spelling errors... And you learn from it!
The other way is to participate in adding to the phrasebooks at Wikitravel, or the language courses at Wikibooks instead of making notes nobody will correct or add to...