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

The Education Minister announced on national broadcast that all academic facilities would stay shut until the ninth of November, explaining that the transportation of employees and pupils had been impacted by the blockade.

He stated that the authorities were “doing everything possible” to end the emergency so that classes could resume on the tenth of November.

For weeks, Mali has been experiencing a fuel shortage, especially in the capital Bamako, after militants from an jihadist network imposed a blockade by striking tankers on primary roads.

Mali is landlocked, so all fuel supplies are transported by truck from neighboring states such as Senegal and the neighboring nation.

Long queues have been winding around petrol stations in the capital in the past few weeks, and the city's normally bustling streets have now apparently become deserted.

The military government had earlier this month promised residents that it was only a short-term problem, but the situation has persisted.

In the past few days, the American diplomatic mission in Bamako declared that secondary diplomatic employees and their dependents would leave Mali amid the worsening fuel shortage and escalating protection worries.

It explained that the energy interruptions had impacted the supply of electricity and had the “ability to disturb” the general safety conditions in unforeseen manners.

The West African nation is presently governed by a armed forces administration headed by the military leader, who seized power in a coup in two years ago.

The military government had popular support when it took power, vowing to address the long-running security crisis triggered by a independence uprising in the northern region by ethnic Tuaregs, which was then hijacked by jihadist fighters.

The international UN troops and France's military had been stationed in previously to address the escalating insurgency.

The international troops have departed since the new administration came in, and the current administration has hired foreign fighters to combat the instability.

Nevertheless, the jihadist insurgency has continued and significant areas of the northern and eastern territories of the nation remain not under administrative command.