4 ideas
Sundiata, son of Sogolon the buffalo-woman, could not walk until about age seven and was mocked by his father's first wife Sassouma Bérété, who had seized the succession for her own son. Exiled with his family, he later returned to defeat the sorcerer-king Soumaoro Kanté at the battle of Krina and found the Mali Empire.
In Mande society the griot (djeli) belongs to a caste whose inherited role is to hold a dynasty's genealogies, deeds, and precedents in memory and to recite them. Each royal line is paired with a griot family, so the past is kept as a living social obligation carried from father to son rather than as an archive anyone can consult. The griot is also the king's counsellor, because only someone who carries the full record of precedent can tell a ruler what his ancestors did in similar situations.
Djeli Mamoudou Kouyaté argues that writing kills memory: people who rely on books stop remembering, while griots who train their memory from childhood keep the past alive and exact. He also treats knowledge as something that must be guarded. Certain secrets are deliberately withheld from outsiders, so control over who may hear the history is part of what keeps it accurate and gives it power.
In the epic, force alone cannot beat Soumaoro, whose sorcery makes him invulnerable. Seen this way, victory depends on hidden knowledge obtained through relationships and intelligence, and the decisive weapon is information about the opponent's one point of vulnerability.