🔗 Share this article

The landlocked West African country has temporarily halted educational facilities and higher learning institutions throughout the country due to a critical petrol shortage resulting from a restriction on fuel imports imposed by militant groups.

Top education official declared on state television that all learning centers would stay shut until 9 November, clarifying that the transportation of staff and students had been impacted by the imposed limitations.

He asserted that the administration were “doing everything possible” to resolve the crisis so that classes could resume on November 10th.

For weeks, Mali has been facing a fuel shortage, notably in the main city, after armed groups from an jihadist network imposed a restriction by attacking fuel trucks on major highways.

Mali is landlocked, so all fuel supplies are transported by road from adjacent nations such as its western neighbor and Côte d'Ivoire.

Long queues have been forming around petrol stations in the capital in the last several days, and the city's typically busy streets have now allegedly grown silent.

The junta-led administration had in recent days assured citizens that it was only a passing concern, but the situation has continued.

In the past few days, the American diplomatic mission in the capital stated that non-critical embassy personnel and their relatives would leave Mali amid the worsening fuel shortage and growing security concerns.

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

Mali is now led by a army council under the leadership of General Goïta, who seized power in a military overthrow in two years ago.

The ruling council had popular support when it took power, committing to address the protracted safety emergency caused by a separatist rebellion in the northern region by ethnic Tuaregs, which was then co-opted by Islamist militants.

The UN peacekeeping mission and French forces had been stationed in previously to address the escalating insurgency.

These forces have withdrawn since the new administration came in, and the military government has employed private military contractors to combat the instability.

However, the jihadist insurgency has persisted and significant areas of the northern and eastern zones of the nation remain beyond state authority.