Apostille vs. Embassy legalisation for Mali
Mali has not joined the Hague Apostille Convention, so a single British certificate does not settle a paper used there. Consular legalisation covers the ground instead, in stages, with the file passing between bodies that each mark only what they can see for themselves. The road is well worn and perfectly ordinary, but it keeps your paper away from you for longer. Length of exposure, rather than difficulty, is what makes it worth planning properly.
Mali's Hague status & what it means
Inside the treaty a paper is settled once and read the same way everywhere. Outside it, every office starts fresh, which is the whole reason a chain exists. So an apostille for Mali is not a slower option or a cheaper one — it is simply not part of the sequence, and asking for it produces a certificate that nobody at the far end has agreed in advance to accept.
The Liverpool → Mali route step by step
Liverpool Register Office at St George's Hall, St George's Place, Liverpool L1 1JJ issues certified copies of births, marriages and deaths, and that is where a civil record should begin its journey. The FCDO Legalisation Office then handles the British stage for the whole United Kingdom and works only by post. A consular act comes after that, and the file is not finished until that act has happened.
Destination-specific requirements
Sort the paperwork by whether a second copy could be had, and treat that sorting as the real risk list. A birth entry can be reissued for a fee at the register office named above. A signed letter, a one-off statement or a paper from a body with no public counter may have nothing behind it, so committing one of those to several handovers is a decision rather than a default.