On 3 September 2025, JNIM announced a blockade of fuel imports into Mali. Thirteen months on, it holds. More than three hundred tankers have been destroyed on the routes from Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire and Guinea, which carry about 95% of the fuel consumed in the country. Fuel still reaches Bamako, but at five times the price and under escort: over a thousand tankers were convoyed through July 2026, protected by Russia’s Africa Corps and, increasingly, by Turkish drones.
A doctrinal shift
This is no longer a guerrilla seeking ground control; it is economic strangulation aimed at state legitimacy: demonstrating that the state can no longer provide basic functions. The Institute for Security Studies has documented the spread of the tactic to regional trade corridors; ACLED describes its generalisation as economic warfare.
Why coastal countries are concerned
The Abidjan-Bamako and Dakar-Bamako corridors are not Malian roads: they are Ivorian and Senegalese economic assets. Hauliers, insurers, ports and customs revenue all depend on their fluidity. A blockade upstream translates downstream into higher insurance premiums, delays, broken contracts and, eventually, a redirection of flows.
Three business-continuity reflexes
- Map the real dependency: for each company, the share of revenue exposed to a single corridor, and the delay beyond which activity stops.
- Prepare alternative routes before the crisis, including their extra cost: a continuity plan that does not price the alternative is not a plan.
- Track leading indicators: transport prices on the route, insurance premiums, escort frequency, reported incidents. These data, public or professional, precede disruption by several weeks.
What to watch
Replication elsewhere: town blockades in Burkina Faso, pressure on northern Benin and Togo routes. And, on the Ivorian side, the private sector’s ability to build corridor risk into continuity planning, alongside climate and currency risk.