Mali EDI Map

Mali Education Disruption Index

Where is education access most likely to be disrupted, and where should resources be focused first?

5 of 50 cercles reach the Critical tier: 3 in Gao, 1 in Mopti, 1 in Tombouctou. These are where field validation should start.

6,471

Conflict events recorded, 2020–2024ACLED

17,941

Conflict fatalities recorded, 2020–2024ACLED

63%

Matched schools closed (2,830 of 4,491)OCHA Mali school registry

Critical cercles — ~856k peoplethis map's headline list

Priority clusters

3 critical cercles

Niger River corridor (Gao)

Ménaka, Bourem, Ansongo

Along the Niger river and the border with Niger, where per-capita conflict is highest. 16 of 19 matched schools closed.

1 critical cercle

Tombouctou cercle

Tombouctou

The region-capital cercle, carrying a heavy 2020–2024 conflict record on top of full closure. 11 of 11 matched schools closed.

1 critical cercle

Central plateau (Mopti)

Bankass

Central Mali's conflict epicentre on the Burkina Faso border. 29 of 30 matched schools closed.

The data gap

22 of 50 cercles

Data-Limited

School-data coverage too thin to score closures. Grey cercles reflect conflict signal only — field verification needed before these cercles can be ruled out.

The cards above cover all 5 Critical cercles; click one to zoom to it. 14 more sit in the High tier. Click any cercle on the map for the numbers driving its score.

A note on field knowledge

This map is a starting point for conversation, not an answer. Where it disagrees with what education teams know on the ground, the disagreement itself is the most useful finding: it points either to a data gap or to a ground condition the data cannot see. Both improve the method.

How to read this map ↓

How to read this map

Each of Mali's 50 cercles gets an Education Disruption Index (EDI) score from 0 to 1, built from three indicators for 2020–2024. Each indicator is divided by the highest value of any cercle, then weighted:

School closures

50%

Share of matched schools recorded as closed.OCHA Mali school registry (2023)

Conflict events

25%

Conflict events per 100,000 people.ACLED, 2020–2024

Fatalities

25%

Conflict fatalities per 100,000 people.ACLED, 2020–2024

Critical (5): the top 5 cercles by EDI that have reliable school data (3 or more matched schools). These are labelled on the map and are where field validation should start.
High (14): EDI of 0.4 or more.
Medium (4): EDI from 0.2 up to 0.4.
Low (5): EDI below 0.2.
Data-Limited (22): fewer than 3 matched schools and fewer than 100 conflict events per 100,000 people. Too little school data to trust the closure rate, so these cercles still need field verification before they can be ruled out.

Click any cercle for its numbers and a bar showing how much of its score comes from closures, events and fatalities. Cercles with thin school data but severe conflict (100 or more events per 100,000) keep a conflict-driven tier. Full rules, the 2022–2024 sensitivity check and known limitations are in METHODOLOGY.md; the charts are on the analytics dashboard.

Inspect the evidence

Every figure on this page is reproducible from raw open data. The pipeline, scoring rules, methodology and source notes are public.

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