Mali Shuts Down Schools and Higher Education Centers as Jihadist Blockade Exacerbates Fuel Shortage

Mali has suspended schools and higher learning institutions countrywide due to a critical petrol shortage resulting from a blockade on energy resources enforced by Islamist insurgents.

The Education Minister announced on public media that all learning centers would be inactive until 9 November, noting that the transportation of employees and pupils had been impacted by the restrictions.

He asserted that the authorities were “making every effort” to alleviate the emergency so that academic sessions could resume on November 10th.

For several weeks, the nation has been grappling with a fuel shortage, notably in the main city, after armed groups from an jihadist network enforced a restriction by attacking transport vehicles on key routes.

Mali is landlocked, so all energy resources are brought in by truck from adjacent nations such as its western neighbor and Ivory Coast.

Long queues have been winding around gas pumps in the main city in recent weeks, and the city's usually crowded streets have now apparently fallen quiet.

The junta-led administration had earlier this month reassured citizens that it was only a passing concern, but the crisis has persisted.

Last week, the US Embassy in the capital stated that secondary diplomatic employees and their families would depart the country amid the worsening fuel shortage and growing security concerns.

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

Mali is now led by a armed forces administration led by General Goïta, who took control in a coup in 2021.

The military government had popular support when it came to authority, promising to tackle the long-running security crisis caused by a independence uprising in the northern region by ethnic Tuaregs, which was then taken over by jihadist fighters.

The UN peacekeeping mission and French forces had been deployed in 2013 to combat the growing rebellion.

Both have withdrawn since the new administration came in, and the military government has hired Russian mercenaries to tackle the violence.

Nevertheless, the militant uprising has persisted and large parts of the northern and eastern zones of the nation remain not under administrative command.