BAMAKO — As Mali officially launches the 2026–2027 school year this Thursday, 1 October, the junta’s grand slogan collides with a grim reality. Transitional President General Assimi Goïta declared this “Year of Education and Culture,” yet across the country more than 2,400 schools will not reopen. The record leaves over 730,000 children without instruction and exposes the strategic dead end the military government has sunk into.
Schools as terror targets: a symbol of lost ground
Nationwide, more than one in five schools is now out of service. This collapse is no accident: it stems directly from the steady territorial expansion of armed jihadist groups. Islamist katibas loot or burn school infrastructure, rejecting so-called Western education, and sometimes convert classrooms into makeshift shelters for thousands of internally displaced people. The map of closures reveals a geography of state abandonment. In the far-northern Kidal region, nearly 84% of schools remain shut. In neighbouring Ménaka, where Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS) operates, 52% of schools in the academy are deemed “non-functional.” The picture is no brighter in Gao or central districts such as Mopti and Bandiagara, nor in parts of Ségou and Koulikoro, now directly exposed to the Group for Support of Islam and Muslims (GSIM, Al-Qaeda-affiliated).
A junta cornered: security promises turn to setbacks
For the transitional authorities, who built their legitimacy on restoring national sovereignty and security, these figures are a harsh rebuke. Since the coups of 2020 and 2021, the junta has made a radical geopolitical shift, breaking with traditional partners: French Barkhane forces were expelled, the UN mission MINUSMA left, and the Algiers peace accord was scrapped. To fill the void, Bamako turned to Russian military partnership and Africa Corps mercenaries (formerly Wagner). Yet the promise of a swift military reconquest has become a string of dramatic reversals. Despite the highly publicised recapture of Kidal in late 2023, Malian armed forces and their Russian auxiliaries have bogged down in bloody wars of attrition. The resounding defeat at Tinzaouatène in summer 2024 against rebel fighters and GSIM combatants marked a turning point, exposing structural weaknesses in the junta’s military setup. Far from containing the threat, this purely security-driven strategy triggered devastating reprisals. Terror groups intensified operations beyond their traditional northern and central sanctuaries, striking at the heart of institutions — as seen in the spectacular attacks on the Faladié gendarmerie school and Bamako’s military airport in September 2024.
The encirclement map: how much territory does the state really hold?
Today, an analysis of control over Malian territory paints a picture of sovereignty largely fragmented. In the far north — Kidal, Ménaka and Taoudénit — the state retains only an island-like presence, confined to fortified administrative centres. ISGS controls vast desert tracts of Ménaka, imposing its law and collecting zakat from locals, while GSIM and various armed groups fight over border routes with Mauritania and Algeria. In the centre — Mopti, Ségou and San — seen as the beating heart of the GSIM insurgency through Katiba Macina, rural areas have almost completely escaped administrative control. Insurgents enforce regular blockades on entire towns such as Niono or Djenné and force the closure of state schools under threat of targeted executions of teachers. In the south and west — Koulikoro, Sikasso and Kayes — once spared, a rapid infiltration is now under way. Sleeper cells of GSIM orchestrate economic blockades, targeting fuel and major roads, gradually strangling supplies to the capital.
A generation sacrificed
Against this general deterioration, the gap between official rhetoric and Malians’ daily reality has never been more striking. While transitional speeches celebrate the country’s “refoundation,” access to knowledge — a fundamental right — continues to retreat dramatically. Every closed school is another ideological victory for obscurantist groups, which find in idle youth fertile ground for recruitment. The “Year of Education” proclaimed in Bamako may well go down, for hundreds of thousands of young Malians, as another blank year amid the din of weapons.
