Madagascar has entered a major political crisis after weeks of youth-led protests against power cuts, water shortages, corruption and poor governance developed into a broader challenge to President Andry Rajoelina’s government. The demonstrations began in late September, drawing inspiration partly from the recent Gen Z uprising in Nepal, but the grievances are distinctly Malagasy: repeated electricity outages, unreliable water supply, weak public services, unemployment and frustration with a political class many young people believe has failed to convert the country’s considerable natural resources into improvements in ordinary living standards. Security forces have responded with tear gas and other coercive measures, protesters have demanded Rajoelina’s resignation, and sections of the security establishment have begun showing signs of refusing orders or sympathising with demonstrators. The crisis therefore has moved beyond a conventional protest over utility provision. When citizens begin questioning whether the police and military will continue enforcing the government’s authority, the issue becomes one of regime survival. Yet the most revealing feature of the uprising is how ordinary its original demands were. Madagascar’s young people did not initially mobilise over an abstract constitutional theory. They mobilised because electricity and water did not work reliably. That is precisely why the crisis matters: political legitimacy is often lost not through one enormous ideological failure but through the accumulation of mundane state failures citizens encounter every day.
Electricity is a particularly useful way to understand state capacity because it connects political institutions directly with economic productivity. A household experiencing a blackout loses lighting, refrigeration, communication and potentially access to water pumps. A small business loses operating hours. A factory loses output and may need expensive backup generators. Hospitals need alternative power systems. Schools lose digital access. Telecommunications become less reliable. The economic cost therefore is not simply the value of the missing electricity itself. Power shortages reduce the productivity of almost every other form of capital in the economy. A computer without electricity is temporarily useless. A factory machine without electricity is idle capital. Electricity therefore functions as a complementary input, meaning weakness in the power system lowers the return on investment elsewhere.
This helps explain why infrastructure failure can generate political anger disproportionate to the amount governments spend on it. Citizens experience electricity and water as basic evidence of whether the state works. A government can announce investment strategies, international partnerships and GDP growth while a household turns on a tap and receives no water. The household’s evaluation of government is therefore based on experienced state capacity rather than reported state capacity. This distinction matters across developing economies because governments often prioritise visible megaprojects while maintenance of ordinary systems receives less political attention. A new airport creates a ribbon-cutting ceremony. Repairing thousands of transformers does not. Yet the second can produce a larger cumulative productivity gain.
Madagascar’s electricity system has struggled for years with insufficient generation, ageing infrastructure, financial weakness and dependence on expensive fuel-based production. The state-owned utility JIRAMA has required substantial public support while still struggling to provide reliable electricity and water. This creates a classic state-owned enterprise fiscal trap. Politicians want electricity prices affordable, so tariffs can remain below the level required to finance investment and maintenance. The utility therefore loses money. Government subsidises the losses. Because subsidies cover operating deficits, less money remains for capital investment. Infrastructure deteriorates further, outages increase and citizens become even less willing to pay higher tariffs for poor service. The system becomes politically difficult to reform because every solution imposes a visible cost on somebody.
Raising electricity tariffs could improve JIRAMA’s finances but hurt households already facing poverty. Keeping tariffs artificially low protects consumers immediately but can make reliable supply impossible. Privatisation might introduce investment and efficiency but can create monopoly pricing if regulation is weak. Government investment can expand capacity but requires fiscal resources Madagascar has limited ability to mobilise. There is therefore no policy that simply makes electricity cheap, reliable and fiscally costless simultaneously. The objective should be targeted affordability rather than universal underpricing: allow tariffs gradually to reflect costs while protecting the poorest households through explicit subsidies, then direct additional revenue towards measurable improvements in reliability. A subsidy shown transparently in the government budget is easier to evaluate than losses hidden inside a utility.
Water supply produces a similar political economy because water infrastructure has high fixed costs and enormous social value. Pipes, treatment facilities, reservoirs and pumping systems require investment long before households consume the first litre. Poor households cannot necessarily pay the full cost through user charges, creating a legitimate role for public finance. But weak billing systems, illegal connections, corruption and inadequate maintenance can undermine utility finances. Again, institutional capacity determines whether infrastructure money becomes infrastructure service. A government can borrow millions for water projects and still fail if procurement is corrupt or maintenance budgets disappear afterwards.
This is why the protesters’ corruption grievances connect directly with utility shortages. Corruption is sometimes discussed as though it were primarily a moral problem involving politicians becoming unfairly rich. The larger economic cost is misallocation. A procurement contract awarded according to political connections rather than cost and quality means the country receives less infrastructure for every dollar spent. A contractor paying a bribe needs to recover that cost somewhere, potentially through higher prices or lower-quality construction. A public official expecting private payment delays approvals. Each transaction adds friction to economic activity. Corruption therefore functions like an informal tax whose revenue finances private individuals rather than public goods.
The distributional consequences make it politically explosive. Madagascar possesses valuable deposits of nickel, cobalt, graphite and other minerals, alongside agricultural and biodiversity assets, yet it remains one of the world’s poorer countries in per-capita terms. Citizens therefore confront a familiar resource question: if the country possesses valuable natural assets, why do basic services remain unreliable? The intuitive conclusion is often that somebody must be stealing the wealth. Sometimes corruption genuinely explains part of the gap. But the resource curse is broader than theft. Natural-resource wealth can concentrate political power, increase competition over rents, expose government revenue to commodity-price volatility and reduce incentives to build broad tax systems connecting citizens directly with the state.
A government financed substantially through resource rents can become less dependent on ordinary taxpayers. That sounds beneficial because citizens pay less tax, but taxation also creates political accountability. Citizens paying income or consumption taxes possess strong incentives to ask where the money goes. Governments dependent heavily on external rents can sometimes distribute patronage without constructing the same fiscal relationship. This is the taxation-accountability mechanism underlying part of modern state formation: when governments need citizens’ money, citizens gain leverage to demand representation and services.
Madagascar’s challenge is not simply extracting more minerals. It is converting natural wealth into productive public capital. Resource revenues can finance electricity grids, schools, transport and healthcare. They can also finance politically connected contracts and consumption. The institutional difference determines whether underground wealth becomes long-term development. Countries such as Botswana historically demonstrated that resource wealth can support development when institutions manage revenues comparatively effectively, while many other resource-rich states demonstrate the opposite outcome. Geology creates opportunity; governance determines conversion.
The protests are particularly significant because Madagascar’s population is extremely young. A youthful demographic structure can create a demographic dividend when large cohorts enter productive employment, increasing the share of workers relative to dependants and accelerating economic growth. The same demographic structure can create political instability when young people enter adulthood faster than the economy creates jobs. The demographic dividend is therefore not automatic. It requires education, investment and employment. Without them, the country receives a demographic pressure rather than a dividend.
Young people also evaluate political institutions differently because they possess fewer sunk investments in the existing political order. An older household may depend on a government pension, public-sector job or established patronage relationship. A twenty-year-old unemployed graduate has less to lose from political disruption. This changes the risk tolerance of protest. The expected cost of instability is lower for someone who believes the existing equilibrium offers little future opportunity.
Social media accelerates the coordination mechanism, as Nepal demonstrated only weeks ago. Young people can observe demonstrations elsewhere, borrow slogans, compare tactics and discover that frustrations they thought were individual are widely shared. This creates common knowledge. A citizen may privately dislike the government while remaining home because they assume everyone else will remain home. Once thousands of people post the same grievance, each learns that others are willing to mobilise too. The expected risk of participation falls as participation rises. Protest therefore can expand non-linearly rather than gradually.
This is why authoritarian or semi-authoritarian governments often appear stable immediately before they become unstable. Opinion polls and ordinary political behaviour underestimate latent dissatisfaction because citizens hide preferences when opposition appears costly. Once the probability of regime survival changes, people reveal preferences suddenly. Political scientists describe versions of this as preference falsification. The first protesters take high risks. If they survive and numbers grow, later participants face lower expected costs. A movement that appeared tiny on Monday can appear nationally dominant by Friday without millions of people changing their underlying opinions during the week.
Security forces become decisive at this stage because regimes ultimately depend on institutions capable of enforcing decisions. Police and soldiers are not mechanical instruments. They are individuals making calculations about legality, loyalty and the probability that the government survives. If they believe the government will remain in power, obeying orders can protect careers. If they believe the government may collapse, firing on protesters can create enormous future personal risk. The expected payoff from obedience therefore changes as the crisis evolves. This produces a tipping-point dynamic: once some units refuse orders, other units update their expectations about regime survival, making further defections more likely.
This is why signs of military or security-force disobedience are much more consequential than another ten thousand protesters joining a demonstration. A government can survive large protests while coercive institutions remain cohesive. It becomes dramatically more vulnerable when those institutions fragment. The fall of governments from Romania in 1989 to Tunisia in 2011 demonstrates versions of this mechanism. Regime survival depends not simply on how many citizens oppose it but on whether the people carrying weapons remain willing to enforce its authority.
Yet military involvement creates its own danger. Soldiers refusing to shoot protesters can prevent bloodshed and accelerate political transition. Soldiers deciding who should govern can undermine democracy. The distinction between refusing unlawful orders and becoming a political actor is therefore crucial. Madagascar has a long history of political instability and military involvement in transitions, including the 2009 crisis that brought Rajoelina to power after then-president Marc Ravalomanana was forced from office. A new political transition dominated by military pressure could therefore reproduce the same institutional weakness protesters are trying to escape: governments ultimately depending on coercive coalitions rather than predictable constitutional transfer.
Rajoelina’s own political history makes the current crisis especially ironic. He first rose to national power through mass protests against an established government, presenting himself as a younger challenger to an entrenched political elite. More than fifteen years later, another generation is now directing almost the same anti-establishment language towards him. This demonstrates the institutionalisation problem of outsider politics. Today’s insurgent becomes tomorrow’s establishment if the structures generating dissatisfaction remain unchanged. Replacing political leaders therefore can provide accountability, but it does not automatically change the incentives facing whoever replaces them.
This is why protesters need to distinguish regime replacement from institutional reform. Removing a president can happen in days. Improving electricity generation takes years. Reforming procurement requires laws, administrative capacity and enforcement. Creating enough employment for a rapidly growing youth population requires sustained investment and productivity growth. Political mobilisation can open the window for reform, but it cannot compress the economic timeline required to produce results.
This creates a dangerous expectations gap after successful uprisings. Citizens experience the extraordinary speed with which political power collapses and expect economic conditions to improve at comparable speed. When they do not, the new government can lose legitimacy before reforms have time to work. Nepal now faces exactly this problem. Bangladesh faced it after Sheikh Hasina’s fall. Madagascar could follow the same pattern. Revolutions accelerate political time while development remains slow.
A successful transition therefore needs a limited number of highly visible early reforms whose effects citizens can verify. Publish government contracts. Audit JIRAMA. Release data on electricity generation and outages. Establish independent investigations into protest deaths. Strengthen asset declarations for senior officials. Create transparent procurement portals. These actions will not solve poverty immediately, but they can demonstrate that the information structure of government has changed. Trust can begin improving before incomes do if citizens see credible evidence that institutions are becoming more accountable.
The international community should focus on supporting this institutional transition rather than selecting political winners. Madagascar’s strategic importance is increasing because its location in the Indian Ocean places it near important maritime routes, while its mineral resources attract interest from China, Europe, the United States and others seeking diversified critical-mineral supply chains. External competition can benefit Madagascar if governments negotiate transparently and use competing offers to obtain better investment terms. It can become harmful if foreign firms or governments cultivate individual political patrons and reproduce domestic rent-seeking.
This is another reason anti-corruption policy becomes foreign policy. A transparent mining concession allows citizens to evaluate royalties, environmental obligations and local investment. An opaque concession creates suspicions that national resources were exchanged for political support. Resource nationalism grows when citizens cannot see the contract governing the resource. Transparency therefore can make foreign investment politically more sustainable rather than simply constraining investors.
India has substantial interests in Madagascar because both countries sit within the wider Indian Ocean strategic environment. India has developed security and development relationships with island and coastal states across the region as part of its maritime strategy, while China has expanded its own economic presence. Madagascar therefore has opportunities to diversify partnerships without becoming dependent on either. The same multi-alignment logic applies here as elsewhere: accept infrastructure, investment and security cooperation from multiple partners while maintaining enough competition that no one partner acquires excessive leverage.
But foreign investment cannot substitute for domestic electricity and water systems. A country can sign mining agreements and strategic partnerships while ordinary firms remain unable to operate reliably because power fails. This is the megaproject-versus-maintenance problem. Political elites often prefer large internationally financed projects because they are visible and create opportunities for political credit. Development frequently depends more heavily on mundane systems: substations, local roads, water pipes, customs administration and reliable courts.
The private sector prices these failures continuously. An investor considering Madagascar calculates not only wages and mineral deposits but the cost of generators, logistics delays, corruption risk and political instability. Each weakness increases the required return before investment becomes worthwhile. Improving governance therefore effectively lowers the country’s risk premium. That can attract investment without government spending enormous amounts on subsidies. Institutional credibility is economically valuable because it changes the price at which capital is willing to enter.
This is the larger reason protests over electricity should be taken so seriously. Electricity failure is visible evidence of a wider coordination failure inside the state. Generation policy, utility finance, procurement, fuel imports, regulation and investment all need to function together. When they do not, the citizen experiences the final failure as darkness. Fixing the grid therefore requires more than buying another generator. It requires improving the institutions connecting finance to service delivery.
Madagascar also faces climate vulnerability, which increases pressure on already weak infrastructure. Droughts and extreme weather can affect water availability, agriculture and electricity systems while damaging roads and other public assets. Climate adaptation therefore is not an environmental luxury. It is development policy. Water storage, resilient electricity networks and agricultural infrastructure reduce the probability that climatic shocks become political shocks.
This creates another distributional problem because Madagascar contributes only a tiny share of historical global greenhouse-gas emissions while facing substantial climate risks. Wealthier countries therefore have a strong equity argument for providing adaptation finance. But climate finance should avoid reproducing the same governance weaknesses as other external aid. Money needs transparent project selection and measurable outcomes. A climate-labelled project is not automatically a productive project.
The political future now depends heavily on whether Rajoelina can restore enough legitimacy and security-force cohesion to remain in power or whether Madagascar enters another transition. Either outcome carries risk. If the government survives primarily through repression, underlying grievances will remain and the next protest wave may become more violent. If the government collapses without a clear constitutional succession, political fragmentation can damage the economy further. The best available outcome is therefore a transition governed by institutions rather than revenge, whether that involves elections, constitutional mechanisms or a negotiated political process.
The protesters themselves also need to avoid allowing legitimate anger to become indiscriminate destruction. Burning government buildings or attacking businesses destroys capital that future governments and citizens need. The state belongs to the population beyond the current administration. Destroying the government’s assets to punish the government is partly destroying the public’s own balance sheet. Peaceful pressure, strikes, elections and institutional monitoring create more durable leverage than uncontrolled violence.
Madagascar’s crisis therefore belongs to a broader pattern becoming visible across 2025. Young populations in several countries are demonstrating that governments can no longer assume political stability simply because opposition parties remain weak or traditional institutions appear controlled. Digital coordination reduces the organisational cost of protest. Global comparison raises expectations. Economic frustration becomes visible instantly. A local policy failure can therefore become the focal point for much broader institutional anger.
But the lesson should not be that Gen Z is uniquely revolutionary. The underlying mechanism is structural. Young people possess high expectations, long future time horizons and relatively little investment in existing political arrangements. When states fail to provide opportunity and basic services, younger cohorts rationally assign lower value to preserving the existing equilibrium.
Governments can respond through repression, censorship or patronage. Those instruments may delay mobilisation. The more sustainable response is much less dramatic: make the state work. Electricity that remains on. Water that arrives. Contracts awarded transparently. Schools that teach useful skills. Jobs capable of supporting households. Police that enforce law without becoming partisan instruments. These services create legitimacy incrementally.
This is why Madagascar’s current crisis should not be dismissed as another unstable African political episode. It illustrates a universal principle of political economy. Citizens do not experience the state primarily through constitutions, speeches or diplomatic summits. They experience it through transactions. The electricity bill. The water tap. The permit office. The school. The police officer. Each interaction updates their belief about whether institutions deserve compliance.
When enough of those interactions fail simultaneously, the government’s legitimacy becomes vulnerable to one final coordination event. In Madagascar, that event was a youth movement organised around electricity and water. The protesters may succeed in removing a government or they may not. The more important question is whether the institutions underneath it change.
Because replacing the person in the presidential palace is relatively easy compared with repairing the network that carries electricity into somebody’s home. Political change becomes meaningful only when citizens eventually notice it without needing to watch the news.
