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Mali has closed schools and higher learning institutions countrywide due to a critical energy crisis resulting from a restriction on fuel imports enforced by jihadist fighters.

Minister of Education announced on state television that all learning centers would be inactive until the ninth of November, noting that the movement of personnel and students had been impacted by the restrictions.

He asserted that the administration were “making every effort” to end the situation so that educational activities could restart on the tenth of November.

For several weeks, Mali has been facing a energy deficit, particularly in the main city, after armed groups from an al-Qaeda affiliate initiated a blockade by targeting transport vehicles on primary roads.

The country is landlocked, so all energy resources are transported by land routes from neighboring states such as its western neighbor and the neighboring nation.

Extended lines have been winding around gas pumps in the main city in the past few weeks, and the city's normally bustling streets have now apparently fallen quiet.

The military government had in recent days assured citizens that it was only a temporary issue, but the emergency has endured.

Last week, the United States diplomatic office in the capital announced that non-essential diplomatic staff and their relatives would evacuate the country amid the intensifying petrol scarcity and escalating safety issues.

It explained that the fuel disruptions had affected the supply of electricity and had the “potential to disrupt” the broader protection environment in unexpected forms.

The West African nation is currently ruled by a military junta under the leadership of General Goïta, who seized power in a takeover in recently.

The junta had popular support when it assumed control, promising to deal with the long-running security crisis triggered by a autonomy movement in the north by ethnic Tuaregs, which was then taken over by Islamist militants.

The United Nations stabilization force and France's military had been deployed in previously to combat the escalating insurgency.

Both have left since the military assumed power, and the current administration has contracted foreign fighters to tackle the violence.

Nevertheless, the jihadist insurgency has continued and large parts of the northern and eastern zones of the country remain outside government control.