Madagascar

Madagascar is an island country located in Eastern Africa, the fourth-largest island in the world, in the Indian Ocean east of Mozambique, covering an area of approximately 587,041 square kilometers. As of 2025, Madagascar has a population of over 29.7 million, with Malagasy and French as official languages. The country features a narrow coastal plain, a high plateau, and mountains in the center, experiencing a tropical climate along the coast, temperate inland, and arid in the south. Antananarivo serves as the capital, and the government operates as a semi-presidential republic.

Madagascar has a low-income economy with a GDP of $16.82 billion and a GDP per capita of $1,900, driven by agricultural products processing, mining, textiles, cement, tourism, and light manufacturing. Key agricultural products include rice, cassava, sugarcane, sweet potatoes, and vanilla, while natural resources include graphite, chromite, coal, bauxite, ilmenite, nickel, and cobalt. The unemployment rate is 3.1% as of 2024, though 70.7% of the population lives below the poverty line. Madagascar is one of the world’s poorest countries, facing challenges including frequent natural disasters, inadequate infrastructure, endemic corruption, and vulnerability to external economic shocks.