Mali Suspends Educational Institutions and Higher Education Centers as Islamist Militant Restrictions Intensifies Fuel Crisis
The landlocked West African country has suspended educational facilities and colleges countrywide due to a critical energy crisis resulting from a blockade on fuel imports enforced by jihadist fighters.
Top education official stated on national broadcast that all learning centers would be inactive until 9 November, explaining that the movement of personnel and learners had been impacted by the imposed limitations.
He asserted that the government officials were “doing everything possible” to resolve the crisis so that academic sessions could continue on 10 November.
For weeks, the nation has been experiencing a fuel shortage, especially in the administrative center, after insurgents from an al-Qaeda-linked organization initiated a restriction by targeting fuel trucks on key routes.
Mali is without coastal access, so all energy resources are brought in by road from neighboring states such as Senegal and Ivory Coast.
Long queues have been snaking around fuel outlets in Bamako in the last several days, and the city's usually crowded streets have now allegedly fallen quiet.
The junta-led administration had previously promised citizens that it was only a temporary issue, but the crisis has persisted.
In the past few days, the United States diplomatic office in the capital stated that non-essential diplomatic staff and their dependents would evacuate Mali amid the worsening fuel shortage and escalating safety issues.
It said that the fuel disruptions had impacted the power distribution and had the “potential to disrupt” the general safety conditions in unpredictable ways.
The West African nation is now led by a military junta headed by the military leader, who assumed authority in a takeover in recently.
The junta had widespread approval when it took power, committing to deal with the protracted safety emergency caused by a separatist rebellion in the northern territories by ethnic Tuaregs, which was then co-opted by Islamist militants.
The United Nations stabilization force and European soldiers had been stationed in a decade ago to combat the growing rebellion.
These forces have departed since the military assumed power, and the ruling council has contracted Russian mercenaries to address the insecurity.
However, the jihadist insurgency has persisted and extensive regions of the north and east of the country remain not under administrative command.
