Madagascar Company & Beneficial Ownership Directory

Analysis

What this data actually tells you about Madagascar

Madagascar’s economy was valued at approximately $19.6 billion in 2025 (World Bank), with GDP per capita at just $545 in 2024 (World Bank), making it one of the poorest countries in the world by this measure despite its exceptional biodiversity and status as a global tourism draw. Real GDP growth slowed from 4.3% in 2024 to around 3.0–3.2% in 2025 (World Bank Macro Poverty Outlook, October 2025), a deceleration the World Bank attributes to political instability, the electricity crisis, and external shocks. Inflation ran at roughly 8.0% in 2025, driven by food and energy prices, even as the Central Bank of Madagascar held its policy rate at 12%. The national currency, the Malagasy ariary (MGA), continued to depreciate against the US dollar, from an average of about 4,523 MGA/USD in 2024 to roughly 4,635 MGA/USD in 2025. Structurally, the economy rests on a narrow base of low-productivity subsistence agriculture, a handful of globally significant export commodities, and a large informal sector. Madagascar is the world’s dominant supplier of natural vanilla — accounting for roughly 75–80% of global natural vanilla supply — alongside a large AGOA-linked textile/garment export sector, nickel-cobalt and ilmenite mining, and a tourism sector built on unique wildlife (13% of GDP per Malagasy tourism authorities, 2024 season).

Madagascar runs a structural trade deficit: in 2024, goods exports fell 17.2% year-on-year — largely on lower vanilla, clove, nickel and cobalt revenues — while imports rose 2.9%. China is Madagascar’s largest single trading partner overall (23.8% of total trade in 2024, 38.5% of imports), followed by France (15.0%); on the export side, France (18.0%), the United States (15.9%) and China (8.2%) are the top destinations. The country’s largest single foreign investment project is the Ambatovy nickel-cobalt mine near Moramanga, majority-owned by Japan’s Sumitomo Corporation (54.17%) with South Korea’s KOMIR holding the remainder; Ambatovy produced roughly 28,000–30,000 tonnes of nickel in FY2024/25, below its ~60,000-tonne design capacity, disrupted by an October 2024 ore-pipeline incident and cyclone damage in February 2026, with Sumitomo now divesting its majority stake to a new consortium (AMRI) for $418 million. Madagascar’s textile sector — the country’s largest formal employer after agriculture, with over 400,000 direct and indirect jobs as of April 2025 — was thrown into acute uncertainty in 2025 when the US administration imposed a 47% tariff on Malagasy goods before granting a temporary 90-day suspension; combined with AGOA’s scheduled September 2025 expiration, Malagasy officials warned as many as 60,000 textile jobs were at risk.

Madagascar’s population was estimated at roughly 30–31 million. Poverty remains among the highest in the world by international comparison: the World Bank’s October 2025 Poverty and Equity Brief put the share of the population below the $2.15/day international poverty line at roughly 80.0% in 2024 (note: some World Bank country-overview pages cite a lower ~66.5% figure for 2025, likely reflecting a different methodology; this discrepancy is flagged rather than resolved arbitrarily). Madagascar is also highly exposed to climate shocks: in February 2026, Cyclone Gezani made landfall near Toamasina with winds up to ~250 km/h, killing at least 40 people, displacing around 16,000, and damaging roughly 80% of the city of Toamasina. Politically, Madagascar experienced a major upheaval in 2025: protests broke out on September 25, 2025, initially organized by a “Gen Z Mada” youth movement angered by chronic JIRAMA power and water outages, before broadening into demands for President Andry Rajoelina’s resignation. On October 11, 2025, the elite CAPSAT military unit announced it would not fire on protesters and joined the demonstrations; on October 14, facing an imminent impeachment vote, Rajoelina attempted to dissolve the National Assembly, which the Assembly deemed invalid and instead voted 130–0 to impeach him. Rajoelina fled the country. On October 17, 2025, CAPSAT colonel Michael Randrianirina was inaugurated as interim president, and on October 20, 2025 he appointed Herintsalama Rajaonarivelo as prime minister of a transitional civilian government; the African Union suspended Madagascar’s membership over the “unconstitutional change of government.” Counterparties verify a specific counterparty’s current exposure to Madagascar’s political transition and vanilla/mining-price dependency directly.