Geese walk in the road as trucks cross the border between Ivory Coast and Mali in village of Nigoun, near Tengrela, on October 31, 2025. In northern Ivory Coast, truck drivers prepare to head back to neighbouring Mali, aboard their tanker trucks loaded with fuel and anxiety. One acronym strikes fear into the hearts of all the truck drivers: JNIM, the name of the jihadist group affiliated with Al-Qaeda that decreed two months ago that no more tanker trucks would be allowed to enter Mali from a neighboring country.
Since then, hundreds of trucks have been set ablaze, selling fuel from Abidjan or Dakar, and are part of JNIMs economic jihad strategy, which aims, among other things, to strangle Bamako and the ruling military junta.
In 2023, more than half of the petroleum products exported by Côte dIvoire were destined for Mali. Malian trucks load up in Yamoussoukro or Abidjan before crossing one of two corridors into the country: the Tengréla corridor or the Pogo corridor, where military escorts take over on the Malian side, all the way to Bamako. An escort can consist of several hundred tankers.
But even under escort, convoys are frequently targeted. The most dangerous areas in southern Mali are the Kadiana-Kolondiéba and Loulouni-Sikasso axes. (Photo by Issouf SANOGO / AFP)