Ghoelian

You don’t need to root the stock ROM to install a custom one, you just need an unlocked bootloader

Your answer is much shorter and to the point, but for the people that understand things better with visuals, here’s a Veritasium video about this exact thing

https://youtu.be/-UrdExQW0cs

I think in theory yes, since the .ml tld is now managed by the Mali government instead of some guy that had an agreement with them.