African country’s correspondence with Liberal forwarded (4)

I believe the answer is:
mali
'african country's' is the definition.
(country in Africa)
'correspondence with liberal forwarded' is the wordplay.
I cannot really see how this works, but
'liberal' could be 'l' (abbreviation) and 'l' is present in the answer.
The remaining letters 'mai' is a valid word which might be clued in a way I don't see.
This explanation may well be incorrect...
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for mali that I've seen before include "Timbuktu is in this landlocked country" , "West African country, capital Bamako" , "part of Africa" , "African country, former French colony" , "A state" .)
