[Version Française]

In an effort to woo foreign investors, President Hery Rajaonarimampianina has been travelling the world, telling anyone who would listen that Madagascar is, today, a land of opportunity [“Madagascar, aujourd’hui, est une terre d’opportunités”]. Makes sense: Increasing foreign investment is one of his administration’s key priorities. There is no doubt that Madagascar is indeed a land of opportunity. Just as almost every other country in the world has the potential to be a land of opportunity. We need to do more to convince investors that Madagascar is a better place to invest than those other countries. Ensuring political stability (and rule of law) would be a logical first step towards this.

We need to address two related questions. First, Madagascar is a land of opportunity. Okay. But opportunity for whom? As long as Madagascar remains a land of opportunity only for foreign investors, and not for the ordinary Malagasy citizen, then we will have a hard time ensuring political stability. Next, what kind of opportunity are we talking about? Opportunity to make a quick profit and to maximize return on investment? Or opportunity to contribute to Madagascar’s long run development. What is sorely needed currently is the opportunity for the average Malagasy to reap the reward from her hard work. Lack of opportunity for upward social mobility leads to social frustration. Social frustration makes political stability less likely.

Sadly, Madagascar has so far looked less like a land of opportunity and more like the land of missed opportunities. We have missed several opportunities to put the Malagasy economy on a high long-run growth trajectory. All past episodes of rapid economic growth have been short-lived and never sustained. Every time the Malagasy economy seems to be on the verge of taking off, some kind political crisis would occur. Each time, political instability would drive the economy into a tailspin.

We have also missed several opportunities to address the root causes of that political instability and to pursue a genuine process of national reconciliation. Successive political crises have created deep resentment and mistrust among different parts of the Malagasy society. These have gradually accumulated over the years and have made political crises more frequent and more intense. While significant resources and time are spent on ending the crises, not enough is used to deal with their root causes. After the resolution of each crisis, the incoming government is either too busy reveling in a post-crisis victory euphoria to care; or it is too busy putting out short term fires to be able to devote the necessary energy to deal with the longer term structural or systemic issues.

As Winston Churchill famously said: “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” Well, with the surprise return of former President Marc Ravalomanana, we may have a perfectly good crisis coming our way. We have to look at this crisis as an opportunity. It could be an opportunity to bring everybody together and candidly discuss and resolve the various problems that ail our nation — this is the first time that all the main protagonists are on Malagasy soil. At least, it could just be an opportunity to show the rest of the world what the concept of Fihavanana really means. It is not often that opportunity comes knocking without advanced notice, let’s try not to miss this one. This may help impress those investors we are trying to woo.