Mali's Conseil des ministres, meeting under President Assimi Goïta at the Koulouba palace on 25 September 2026, adopted draft texts creating the Société malienne de Transport et de Logistique (SMTL) and approved its statutes, according to the official communiqué (CM N°2026-38/SGG) and reporting by Ouestaf.com and Bamada.net. The company's mandate is to ensure public road transport of people and goods domestically and internationally and to strengthen control of supply chains for agricultural products, inputs and hydrocarbons.
The government has justified the move by pointing to recurring difficulties in warehousing, transport, handling and storage of import/export goods, and links the decision to lessons from recent supply crises — a reference to the jihadist-imposed fuel blockade that disrupted Mali's hydrocarbon imports through 2025 and into 2026. However, no source discloses SMTL's capital amount, ownership structure, leadership, or operational launch timeline; officials and outlets covering the announcement note that these details are still to be specified.
The creation echoes a similar move by Burkina Faso, which set up a state logistics company, Faso Transit et Logistique, in March 2025 with a disclosed capital of 500 million FCFA to manage transit of strategic goods including hydrocarbons, gold and military equipment. Whether SMTL will follow a comparable capital and governance structure remains unclear, and analysts caution this is inference rather than confirmed fact.