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The landlocked West African country has suspended educational facilities and higher learning institutions countrywide due to a severe fuel scarcity resulting from a blockade on fuel imports implemented by militant groups.

The Education Minister stated on state television that all learning centers would stay shut until 9 November, explaining that the movement of employees and pupils had been impacted by the blockade.

He emphasized that the government officials were “doing everything possible” to end the crisis so that educational activities could resume on November 10th.

For a number of weeks, the nation has been facing a petrol crisis, particularly in the administrative center, after militants from an jihadist network enforced a restriction by targeting fuel trucks on primary roads.

The country is without coastal access, so all energy resources are brought in by land routes from bordering countries such as its western neighbor and Ivory Coast.

Long queues have been forming around petrol stations in Bamako in the past few weeks, and the city's typically busy streets have now reportedly grown silent.

The ruling military council had previously promised the public that it was only a temporary issue, but the emergency has endured.

In the past few days, the American diplomatic mission in Bamako announced that non-critical embassy personnel and their dependents would leave the country amid the intensifying energy crisis and increasing safety issues.

It explained that the petroleum supply issues had impacted the supply of electricity and had the “potential to disrupt” the broader protection environment in unexpected forms.

Mali is presently governed by a military junta led by Gen Assimi Goïta, who assumed authority in a takeover in 2021.

The ruling council had public backing when it assumed control, promising to tackle the ongoing instability triggered by a separatist rebellion in the northern region by ethnic Tuaregs, which was then hijacked by jihadist fighters.

The international UN troops and French forces had been stationed in 2013 to address the growing rebellion.

These forces have left since the junta took over, and the ruling council has employed foreign fighters to address the violence.

However, the militant uprising has continued and significant areas of the north and east of the nation remain beyond state authority.