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The landlocked West African country has suspended educational facilities and colleges countrywide due to a critical energy crisis caused by a blockade on petroleum supplies enforced by jihadist fighters.

Minister of Education announced on public media that all education institutions would stay shut until the ninth of November, clarifying that the movement of personnel and pupils had been disrupted by the blockade.

He emphasized that the government officials were “working tirelessly” to resolve the situation so that classes could restart on 10 November.

For several weeks, Mali has been facing a energy deficit, particularly in the administrative center, after insurgents from an jihadist network initiated a restriction by striking tankers on key routes.

The country is landlocked, so all energy resources are delivered by truck from neighboring states such as Senegal and the neighboring nation.

Lengthy waits have been forming around gas pumps in Bamako in the past few weeks, and the city's usually crowded streets have now apparently grown silent.

The junta-led administration had previously assured residents that it was only a short-term problem, but the crisis has endured.

In the past few days, the US Embassy in Bamako announced that non-essential diplomatic staff and their dependents would evacuate Mali amid the deteriorating energy crisis and increasing protection worries.

It noted that the fuel disruptions had impacted the energy availability and had the “potential to disrupt” the broader protection environment in unexpected forms.

Mali is currently ruled by a armed forces administration headed by General Goïta, who seized power in a takeover in 2021.

The ruling council had widespread approval when it assumed control, promising to tackle the ongoing instability prompted by a separatist rebellion in the northern region by the Tuareg population, which was then co-opted by Islamist militants.

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

Both have left since the military assumed power, and the current administration has employed private military contractors to tackle the insecurity.

Nevertheless, the Islamist rebellion has endured and significant areas of the north and east of the state remain not under administrative command.