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The landlocked West African country has temporarily halted schools and colleges throughout the country due to a severe energy crisis triggered by a blockade on fuel imports imposed by militant groups.

Minister of Education announced on national broadcast that all education institutions would stay shut until November 9th, explaining that the movement of staff and learners had been impacted by the blockade.

He emphasized that the administration were “doing everything possible” to end the situation so that academic sessions could continue on the tenth of November.

For a number of weeks, Mali has been grappling with a energy deficit, particularly in the administrative center, after militants from an jihadist network imposed a embargo by striking fuel trucks on key routes.

The country is landlocked, so all energy resources are brought in by land routes from adjacent nations such as its western neighbor and Côte d'Ivoire.

Long queues have been snaking around petrol stations in the main city in the last several days, and the city's normally bustling streets have now reportedly grown silent.

The military government had earlier this month reassured the public that it was only a temporary issue, but the emergency has persisted.

In the past few days, the US Embassy in Bamako declared that non-critical embassy personnel and their families would depart the country amid the deteriorating petrol scarcity and escalating safety issues.

It said that the energy interruptions had impacted the power distribution and had the “potential to disrupt” the overall security situation in unpredictable ways.

The West African nation is presently governed by a armed forces administration led by the military leader, who took control in a takeover in recently.

The ruling council had popular support when it assumed control, vowing to address the ongoing instability caused by a autonomy movement in the northern territories by the Tuareg population, which was then hijacked by extremist groups.

The UN peacekeeping mission and French forces had been stationed in 2013 to combat the escalating insurgency.

These forces have departed since the junta took over, and the military government has hired Russian mercenaries to address the violence.

Nevertheless, the Islamist rebellion has persisted and significant areas of the north and east of the nation remain beyond state authority.