🔗 Share this article

The landlocked West African country has suspended educational facilities and higher learning institutions countrywide due to a severe energy crisis resulting from a blockade on petroleum supplies imposed by militant groups.

Minister of Education stated on state television that all education institutions would be inactive until the ninth of November, clarifying that the movement of personnel and students had been disrupted by the imposed limitations.

He stated that the administration were “making every effort” to resolve the emergency so that academic sessions could resume on the tenth of November.

For a number of weeks, Mali has been grappling with a petrol crisis, especially in the main city, after militants from an jihadist network imposed a restriction by attacking fuel trucks on key routes.

The country is landlocked, so all fuel supplies are transported by land routes from bordering countries such as Senegal and the neighboring nation.

Long queues have been forming around fuel outlets in the main city in recent weeks, and the city's normally bustling streets have now reportedly grown silent.

The military government had previously assured the public that it was only a short-term problem, but the crisis has continued.

Last week, the United States diplomatic office in the capital declared that secondary diplomatic employees and their families would depart Mali amid the intensifying fuel shortage and increasing protection worries.

It explained that the fuel disruptions had disrupted the power distribution and had the “potential to disrupt” the overall security situation in unpredictable ways.

The West African nation is presently governed by a military junta led by Gen Assimi Goïta, who seized power in a military overthrow in two years ago.

The junta had popular support when it assumed control, promising to address the protracted safety emergency caused by a separatist rebellion in the northern region by the Tuareg population, which was then co-opted by extremist groups.

The UN peacekeeping mission and France's military had been deployed in previously to combat the growing rebellion.

The international troops have left since the military assumed power, and the ruling council has hired private military contractors to address the insecurity.

However, the jihadist insurgency has persisted and large parts of the north and east of the nation remain outside government control.