On the evening of September 25th, 2025, Antananarivo fell into silence. At least five people were killed in mass protests against chronic power outages and water shortages, prompting authorities to impose a dusk-to-dawn curfew from 7pm to 5am. Young protesters — many born after 2000, with more years of outages than of electricity — gathered carrying banners reading "Water and electricity are basic human needs" and "Let us speak out". By dawn, barricades of burning tires lined the streets, cable car stations were set ablaze, and Madagascar's fragility laid bare.

The blackout was not a technical glitch. It was the inevitable result of decades of broken utilities, hollow budgets, and absent governance. Madagascar's crisis is not that it lacks plans; it is that its plans rarely become reality.

The Illusion of Growth

Madagascar has long been a paradox. Growth is projected to average 4.7% from 2025 to 2027, yet the country continues to grapple with economic challenges as high population growth (over 2.4% annually) and persistent inflation (averaging 7.6% in 2024) limit the potential for substantial improvements in living standards.

The economy of Madagascar is US$18.71 billion by gross domestic product as of 2025, placing GDP per capita among the lowest globally. The country's estimated 30.3 million population in 2023 faces the challenge of a persistently high poverty rate (75% in 2022, using the national poverty line of about 4,000 ariary per person per day).

On paper, this is a nation of growth. In reality, it is a nation of endurance. The problem is structural. Only 36 percent of the population has access to electricity in Madagascar. In 2022, 75.2% of the national population was poor: 79.9% in rural and 55.5% in urban areas. Rural families cook with charcoal while farmers guard vanilla fields at night with machetes, and in the capital shopkeepers close early for fear of looters during outages.

Growth without development is a cruel illusion: the numbers rise, but the light bulbs stay dark.

The Ghost in the Budget

Every year, the Malagasy parliament debates the Projet de Loi de Finances. The speeches are grand, the targets ambitious. But in Madagascar, budgets are moral documents that lie.

Revenue remains pitiful. Tax revenue (% of GDP) in Madagascar was reported at 9.3571% in 2022, according to the World Bank — far below regional standards. At the approval of the ECF arrangement in June 2024, the Malagasy authorities committed to reducing tax expenditures by MGA 280 billion annually from 2025 to 2027, with the goal to raise the tax revenue-to-GDP ratio by 2.4 percentage point over three years.

Despite efforts to boost tax revenue, the tax-to-GDP ratio remained low at 10.8%. Exemptions for politically connected businesses bleed hundreds of billions of ariary each year. The finance ministry promises reform, but implementation remains elusive.

Parliament approves. The ministries sign. The donors cheer. But when the year ends, the numbers dissolve. The ghosts of budgets haunt Madagascar — ambitious, inspiring, but invisible in daily life.

JIRAMA, the Utility That Failed

At the centre of the crisis is JIRAMA, the state-owned electricity and water provider. JIRAMA struggles with inefficient production, high transmission and distribution losses, and tariffs below recovery costs. These issues create a substantial fiscal burden on the government, hindering social investment and economic growth.

JIRAMA's debt to the private sector, including arrears to suppliers, amounted to MGA 1,880 billion or 2.7 percent of GDP at end-2023. Jirama uses up 10 percent of the state's revenue, yet delivers chronic failures.

The statistics are damning: Based on the 2022 World Bank Enterprise Survey for Madagascar, for firms that report experiencing outages (around 52 percent of firms surveyed), there are 6.3 electrical outages in a typical month, which last an average of 3.1 hours. Power cuts often leave homes and businesses without electricity for over 12 hours.

Engineers patch old turbines with wire and prayer. The Andekaleka power plant, which generates 112 to 114 megawatts and produces 55% of the electricity needed by the Antananarivo Interconnected Grid (RIA), struggles during the dry season with daily production of 40 megawatts proving difficult.

For the young protesters of 2025, JIRAMA is not just a utility. It is the symbol of everything that does not work: a state that takes money but delivers darkness.

The Vanilla Trap

If minerals are the future, vanilla has been the past. Madagascar produces the largest vanilla harvest in the world and Malagasy vanilla accounts for 80-85% of the global vanilla market. But the crop is a curse.

Madagascar's vanilla market in the US was put at risk in April 2025 following Donald J. Trump's declaration of "reciprocal tariffs" amounting to 47%. Prices swing wildly. Farmers live at the mercy of middlemen, thieves, and global markets.

In the north, growers sleep in their fields to protect beans from theft. In the capital, officials boast of foreign exchange earnings. But in villages, farmers sink deeper into poverty when global buyers turn to synthetics or cheaper suppliers.

The government has tried to fix minimum prices. The result: stockpiles unsold, buyers alienated, and farmers poorer than before. Vanilla is not a luxury to Malagasy farmers. It is survival. And survival is increasingly uncertain.

The Price of Neglect

A child born in Madagascar just before the pandemic is projected to be 39% as productive as they could be with complete education and good health. The numbers are stark: government spending on education and health remains woefully inadequate.

The government spends about 3 percent of GDP on education, 2 percent on health. That translates into roughly sixteen dollars of health spending per person per year. In practical terms: one box of antibiotics, one consultation, maybe one vaccine.

Child vulnerability is extremely high, with high malnutrition among children (39.8% stunting), child labor, and high rates of early marriages and teenage pregnancies, all of which reinforce the intergenerational transmission of poverty.

Rural children sit in classrooms without desks or books. Many teachers are under-qualified, paid late, and absent often. Dropout rates are high, literacy low. The rhetoric in parliament is stirring: "Education is our priority; health is our foundation." But the reality is crumbling clinics and schools that flood in the rains.

Budgets are moral documents. Madagascar's reveals a morality of neglect.

Climate on the Knife's Edge

Madagascar is a country that, despite being one of the world's poorest, faces significant vulnerability to climate change, with extreme weather events becoming increasingly frequent. Poverty is especially high in the south and the southeast, where it exceeds 91.2%, due to climate shocks (droughts, cyclones, and floods).

Recent cyclones destroy bridges, flood villages, and wipe out crops worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Droughts in the south push families into cycles of famine. Coastal erosion swallows land once fertile.

The government has signed onto climate adaptation strategies, and donors have pledged millions through resilience facilities. The RSF arrangement aims to bolster climate governance and mainstream Madagascar's climate agenda into public financial and investment management processes, but these are band-aids on gaping wounds.

For rural families, climate change is not a debate. It is hunger today, migration tomorrow.

A Roadmap or a Mirage?

The government's blueprint is ambitious. The government plans to deploy 1,000 megawatts of solar power nationwide, with 250 megawatts funded by state resources. This includes 100 megawatts for the RIA, with 70 megawatts expected to be available by the end of October 2025.

To achieve sustainable development, Madagascar must tax fairly and consistently, spend on people not patronage, fix JIRAMA before dreaming of megaprojects, embed climate resilience in every road, bridge, and port, and turn mineral wealth into schools, hospitals, and jobs rather than elite enrichment.

This is not about technical fixes alone. It is about trust. The Malagasy state has lost credibility. Without it, no plan survives contact with reality.

Light or Darkness

The night of September 25th was not about electricity. It was about dignity. A generation of Malagasy refused to accept candlelight as their inheritance.

Madagascar does not lack minerals, land, or plans. It lacks will. The lights that failed in Antananarivo illuminated a larger truth: unless Madagascar aligns words with deeds, budgets with delivery, and power with people, it will remain an island of broken promises.

But if it seizes this moment — with discipline, courage, and accountability — the island that flickered in darkness may yet light a path for the Global South.

This analysis is based on extensive research using data from the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, African Development Bank, and other authoritative sources, reflecting conditions as of September 2025.