🔗 Share this article

Mali has suspended educational facilities and colleges countrywide due to a severe fuel scarcity caused by a embargo on fuel imports imposed by jihadist fighters.

Top education official stated on public media that all academic facilities would remain closed until 9 November, clarifying that the transportation of staff and students had been impacted by the imposed limitations.

He stated that the administration were “making every effort” to resolve the crisis so that academic sessions could restart on November 10th.

For a number of weeks, Mali has been facing a energy deficit, particularly in the main city, after insurgents from an al-Qaeda affiliate imposed a embargo by targeting tankers on major highways.

The country is without coastal access, so all energy resources are brought in by truck from neighboring states such as its western neighbor and Côte d'Ivoire.

Long queues have been forming around gas pumps in the capital in recent weeks, and the city's normally bustling streets have now apparently fallen quiet.

The military government had previously promised citizens that it was only a short-term problem, but the situation has persisted.

In the past few days, the US Embassy in the capital declared that secondary diplomatic employees and their families would depart the country amid the intensifying petrol scarcity and growing security concerns.

It explained that the fuel disruptions had impacted the power distribution and had the “capacity to affect” the overall security situation in unforeseen manners.

The West African nation is now led by a armed forces administration headed by Gen Assimi Goïta, who assumed authority in a military overthrow in two years ago.

The ruling council had public backing when it took power, promising to address the protracted safety emergency triggered by a independence uprising in the northern territories by ethnic Tuaregs, which was then taken over by jihadist fighters.

The international UN troops and France's military had been deployed in previously to address the increasing militant activity.

These forces have withdrawn since the junta took over, and the ruling council has employed private military contractors to address the violence.

Nonetheless, the jihadist insurgency has continued and extensive regions of the northern and eastern zones of the country remain outside government control.