🔗 Share this article

The landlocked West African country has closed educational facilities and higher learning institutions countrywide due to a critical petrol shortage caused by a embargo on petroleum supplies implemented by Islamist insurgents.

The Education Minister stated on state television that all education institutions would be inactive until the ninth of November, explaining that the travel of employees and students had been affected by the imposed limitations.

He asserted that the administration were “making every effort” to end the crisis so that academic sessions could resume on November 10th.

For several weeks, Mali has been experiencing a fuel shortage, especially in the administrative center, after armed groups from an al-Qaeda affiliate imposed a restriction by striking fuel trucks on key routes.

Mali is without coastal access, so all fuel supplies are transported by truck from adjacent nations such as Senegal and Côte d'Ivoire.

Lengthy waits have been winding around gas pumps in Bamako in the last several days, and the city's usually crowded streets have now apparently become deserted.

The junta-led administration had in recent days assured citizens that it was only a temporary issue, but the crisis has endured.

Recently, the American diplomatic mission in the capital announced that non-critical embassy personnel and their families would depart the country amid the deteriorating petrol scarcity and growing protection worries.

It explained that the petroleum supply issues had impacted the energy availability and had the “potential to disrupt” the broader protection environment in unpredictable ways.

Mali is now led by a military junta under the leadership of the military leader, who assumed authority in a military overthrow in recently.

The junta had widespread approval when it came to authority, promising to deal with the ongoing instability prompted by a autonomy movement in the north by Tuareg communities, which was then taken over by Islamist militants.

The UN peacekeeping mission and European soldiers had been stationed in previously to combat the increasing militant activity.

These forces have left since the new administration came in, and the military government has contracted Russian mercenaries to address the violence.

Nevertheless, the Islamist rebellion has endured and significant areas of the northern and eastern territories of the country remain not under administrative command.