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The landlocked West African country has closed educational facilities and higher learning institutions across the nation due to a acute energy crisis resulting from a embargo on energy resources enforced by Islamist insurgents.

The Education Minister announced on public media that all learning centers would be inactive until 9 November, explaining that the travel of employees and pupils had been affected by the imposed limitations.

He asserted that the government officials were “doing everything possible” to alleviate the situation so that classes could resume on the tenth of November.

For weeks, the nation has been grappling with a petrol crisis, especially in the main city, after militants from an al-Qaeda-linked organization imposed a blockade by striking transport vehicles on major highways.

Mali is without coastal access, so all fuel supplies are transported by land routes from neighboring states such as its western neighbor and the neighboring nation.

Lengthy waits have been forming around petrol stations in the capital in the past few weeks, and the city's usually crowded streets have now allegedly fallen quiet.

The military government had previously assured residents that it was only a temporary issue, but the emergency has persisted.

Recently, the US Embassy in the capital declared that non-critical embassy personnel and their families would depart the country amid the worsening fuel shortage and increasing protection worries.

It noted that the fuel disruptions had disrupted the supply of electricity and had the “capacity to affect” the overall security situation in unexpected forms.

The West African nation is presently governed by a military junta headed by Gen Assimi Goïta, who took control in a coup in 2021.

The military government had popular support when it assumed control, vowing to address the protracted safety emergency prompted by a autonomy movement in the northern territories by the Tuareg population, which was then co-opted by extremist groups.

The United Nations stabilization force and France's military had been stationed in previously to deal with the escalating insurgency.

Both have withdrawn since the junta took over, and the ruling council has contracted foreign fighters to tackle the violence.

However, the jihadist insurgency has persisted and large parts of the northern and eastern zones of the nation remain not under administrative command.