Mali expects to increase its rice output to 3 million tonnes in the 2017/18 season, about 8 percent more than the previous crop, figures from the Agriculture Ministry showed on Saturday. Mali is Africa's second biggest rice grower after Nigeria, thanks to the vast Niger river that runs through its otherwise mostly dry, landlocked territory. The ministry figures showed 2.78 million tonnes of rice were produced in 2016/17. The forecast of three million would be over an area of 947,878 hectares cultivated, it said.