VIGIL CONSILIUM
Context. Not headlines.
Coverage · Central Sahel

Transport network · partial record

Import corridors

The overland routes from the coast — Dakar, Abidjan, Lomé, Cotonou — that carry the landlocked states' fuel and trade, under a declared blockade in Mali and a closed border for Niger.

12 published markers 6 supply systems

Assessed as of
2026-08
Last reviewed
2026-10-03

AssessmentHigh confidence

Context, not targeting. A system record names published markers and published operators and states dependencies at the level a published institution does. It carries no facility-level capacity, vulnerability, protection or repair detail; the schema has no field for any of it.

123Open the module map
Locator — land outline from Natural Earth 110m (public domain); 12 places this record names, at the coordinates the module already publishes. No routes, boundaries, control or activity are drawn.

What this system is

Three overland routes from Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire and Guinea carry Mali's entire fuel supply, with no refining, pipeline or rail alternative at scale; Niger's principal route through Benin was closed by a political dispute. The corridors are where armed interdiction and political closure meet the economy.

The economy's and the state's lifeline, and the mechanism by which the blockade reaches the capital: fuel queues in Bamako, Ségou and Kayes are the single best indicator of its bite.

Confidence: High As of 2026-08Reviewed 2026-10-03

The system

Overview
Mali refines nothing and imports every litre, so the Bamako–Dakar and Bamako–Abidjan corridors and the Guinea route are not one option among several — they are the supply. They have been under a declared blockade since September 2025, with several hundred tankers reported destroyed, and the AES escort corridor record describes the military response. Niger's pre-crisis import route ran 70–80 per cent through the Port of Cotonou, and the Benin border's political closure is the module's clearest case of a route shut by a decision in another capital rather than by attack. Burkina Faso's corridors carry both causes. The disruption-cause axis on the logistics records exists because the distinction is the finding.
Current state · as of 2026-08
Mali's corridors under declared blockade since September 2025 (record assessed August 2026); Niger's Benin route closed by political dispute; escorts the state's answer on the Malian routes.
Commodities and outputs
Refined fuel (imported)

Nodes

The published markers that carry this system value, by the module’s own priority. A note is the system record’s; a marker without one is a member by its own tag.

Routes and operators

Supply systems running through it

  • Mali's fuel import corridorsFuel imports · 6 nodes · 5 documented disruptions · named by the recordThree overland routes supply a landlocked state's entire fuel demand — and since September 2025 they have been the target of a declared blockade.
  • Burkina Faso's import corridorsGeneral trade · 2 nodes · 3 documented disruptions · named by the recordFour overland routes from four coastal states carry almost everything a landlocked country consumes — and its fuel is stored outside its own borders.
  • Niger's import corridorsGeneral trade · 6 nodes · 4 documented disruptions · named by the recordA landlocked state whose principal route to the sea was closed by politics in 2023 and has been only partly replaced since.
  • The AES escort corridor through Burkina FasoGeneral trade · 6 nodes · 2 documented disruptions · named by the recordThe escorted road on which Burkina Faso and Niger hand convoys to each other at Dori — and on which confederation fuel for Mali has travelled.
  • The eastern fuel route from Niger into MaliFuel imports · 6 nodes · 2 documented disruptions · named by the recordNigerien fuel reaching northern Mali by the river road through Labbezanga — a route that worked under joint escort until its border gate left state hands.
  • Central Mali sustainment and position regenerationMilitary sustainment · 8 nodes · 5 documented disruptions · joined by its nodesOne hub, a flooded delta and a set of camps that are easier to lose than to put back.

Dependencies and constraints

Each marked documented (a published source states it) or assessed (Vigil infers it and says so). The two are never drawn the same way.

Transmission chains through this system

Each step carries its own basis grade — Confirmed, Plausible exposure, Unconfirmed scenario — and a chain can only weaken from left to right.

Watch questions bearing on it

Events at its nodes

29 Jan 2026A tanker convoy is destroyed near Kayes and its drivers executedSep 2025 – ongoingJNIM declares a national fuel blockade1 Jul 2025JNIM attacks seven towns in western and central Mali in one morning1 – 6 Jun 2025Boulikessi is overrun twice and abandoned

Economic exposures it underlies

ExposureRefined fuelExposureTrade & transport

Actors and arrangements

ProfileMali — Transitional AuthoritiesProfileNiger — CNSP Transitional AuthoritiesProfileBurkina Faso — Transitional Authorities

What remains unknown

  • No corridor throughput figure is published; the module reads the blockade through arrivals, burned tankers and fuel queues, not volumes.

Open in Explore Interactive: select this record and follow what connects to it.

Sensitivity: public-contextual Confidence: High Sources: ACLED conflict data & analysis↗ · Africa Center for Strategic Studies↗ · Al Jazeera English↗ · Institute for Security Studies (ISS Africa)↗ · International Crisis Group↗ · Established international media reporting Methodology Corrections

Assessed as of — 2026-08 Last reviewed — 2026-10-03