🔗 Share this article

Mali has closed schools and colleges countrywide due to a critical petrol shortage caused by a restriction on petroleum supplies implemented by Islamist insurgents.

Top education official declared on public media that all learning centers would remain closed until November 9th, explaining that the movement of staff and pupils had been impacted by the blockade.

He stated that the authorities were “making every effort” to alleviate the situation so that classes could resume on 10 November.

For several weeks, the nation has been experiencing a energy deficit, especially in the administrative center, after militants from an jihadist network imposed a restriction by targeting transport vehicles on major highways.

The country is landlocked, so all fuel supplies are brought in by truck from neighboring states such as Senegal and Côte d'Ivoire.

Long queues have been snaking around petrol stations in the capital in recent weeks, and the city's usually crowded streets have now reportedly fallen quiet.

The ruling military council had previously assured residents that it was only a short-term problem, but the crisis has persisted.

In the past few days, the American diplomatic mission in Bamako stated that non-essential diplomatic staff and their families would evacuate the country amid the deteriorating energy crisis and increasing protection worries.

It explained that the petroleum supply issues had impacted the energy availability and had the “potential to disrupt” the general safety conditions in unpredictable ways.

The West African nation is currently ruled by a army council under the leadership of Gen Assimi Goïta, who seized power in a coup in 2021.

The ruling council had widespread approval when it came to authority, vowing to deal with the ongoing instability prompted by a autonomy movement in the northern territories by ethnic Tuaregs, which was then taken over by Islamist militants.

The international UN troops and French forces had been deployed in 2013 to combat the escalating insurgency.

Both have departed since the new administration came in, and the current administration has hired private military contractors to combat the instability.

Nonetheless, the jihadist insurgency has continued and large parts of the north and east of the state remain beyond state authority.