According to a news article about US MIL emails being accidentally sent to ML addresses due to misspellings, there was apparently a contractor in charge of the ML TLD, whose 10(?)-year contract was up the other day, I think, or will be soon. With Mali taking direct control over it, presumably they have their own ideas how to manage it. Why they wouldn't or couldn't have had the contractor do it (charge for domains) a long time ago, I have no idea. Doesn't seem like something that would have to be postponed until the contract was over, but obviously I have no insight into the details of the matter.