Madagascar’s most volatile political crisis in years is now a test of whether power can calm the street by changing faces at the top. President Andry Rajoelina has named General Ruphin Fortunat Zafisambo as prime minister after firing his cabinet, a move meant to steady the state and answer a youth-led revolt that began over electricity and water, then widened into a challenge to his rule. The appointment, announced at the start of the week, landed in a city that no longer waits for official timelines. Students and neighborhood groups march by day, regroup online by night, and keep their focus on outcomes residents can feel.
Change the operator, promise dialogue, restore services. Yet on the avenues of Antananarivo, the early reaction is skeptical. Protest organizers call the reshuffle a signal of control, not accountability. Doctors talk about tear gas near maternity wards. Shop owners describe hours without power and evenings without water pressure strong enough to fill a bucket. A promise of talks is on the calendar, with the presidency flagging a national dialogue, but the street is measuring sincerity in kilowatts and liters.
How a service failure became a political reckoning
What erupted first was not ideology. It was outage math. Households counted eight to twelve hours without power, a rhythm that closed classrooms and idled small factories. Pumps stalled and taps sputtered, so families queued with plastic jerrycans. As the grievances stacked, marches spread from campus corridors to commercial streets and then outward to coastal cities. Police deployed tear gas and rubber rounds, and the casualty ledger mounted to a figure the United Nations described as grave. The UN Human Rights Office said at least 22 people have died and more than 100 have been injured since the unrest began, numbers the government disputes.
By the second week, the movement’s language had shifted. The chants still named water and power, but placards began to speak of resignation and reform. Organizers published lists that moved beyond service delivery to institutions and timelines. Within that pressure, Rajoelina dissolved his government, a step that bought hours, not days. The cabinet’s dissolution did not lower the turnout on campus gates or in working-class neighborhoods. The following Monday, police lines formed again and protests entered a third week across multiple cities, a pattern tracked by wire crews and local stations.
The choice of a general
Ruphin Fortunat Zafisambo arrives with a career in command and a manager’s docket. His brief is simple to state and hard to achieve: restore essential services, cool the streets without widening the gulf between citizens and the state, and build a cabinet that looks like a service bureau, not a bunker. The composition of that cabinet will be the clearest early signal. Energy and water need technocrats with authority to act, not spokespeople who count press conferences as deliveries.
Competence here is not an abstraction. Only a third of Malagasy households are connected to the grid. The state utility, JIRAMA, runs on a model that loses power in the wires and money on the balance sheet. The IMF’s technical work puts electricity access at roughly 36 percent and details losses in generation and distribution that drain the budget and choke growth. Without transparency in procurement and autonomy for engineers, ambitious announcements wilt between decree and delivery.
What the streets are asking for
The movement’s hardest task is to turn a rally into a program. That does not require winning elections. It requires translating anger into measurable asks that a government can meet without negotiating its survival away. In this crisis, those asks look concrete. A binding uptime standard for hospitals and schools. A 30-, 60-, and 90-day repair schedule posted by circuit, with weekly public reporting. Emergency generators for critical clinics and water treatment plants until base load improves. A claims channel for shops looted during flashpoints, with guardrails against fraud. A public protocol on crowd control, with a register of incidents and independent referrals when force exceeds the line.
That kind of program is not a concession of principle. It is a pivot to outcomes. It also sets a baseline to judge the new government by something other than press releases. For residents who do not care about the choreography in the prime minister’s office, it offers a way to measure whether the street might stand down for a week.
A capital that does not wait for the center
Digital tools have ended the monopoly of narrative. Organizers livestream police lines and power returns. Neighborhood spokespeople explain why they stayed out yesterday and why they will return tomorrow. In that environment, a promise of talks reads like a tactic unless the details are public. The presidency says it will host a national dialogue with spiritual leaders, students, and civil society. That can widen responsibility if the agenda is not scripted. It fails if the security posture does not relax and if the outcomes are not binding.
Security on edge
Policing has oscillated between hard lines and stand-backs. When riot squads pushed, crowds scattered, then regrouped with sharper rhetoric. When police stood off, nighttime opportunists probed shopfronts and neighborhoods self-organized for protection. A durable posture sits between those poles. It protects emergency corridors and critical infrastructure, holds a visible but restrained perimeter around marches, and prioritizes arrest only when violence is imminent or active. Above all, it treats peaceful protest as a valve rather than a threat. That distinction is not academic in a city where curfews have been imposed and where parents now plan schooldays around the risk of tear gas near campus gates.
An economy priced by predictability
The fastest way to buy time with the business community is not a press conference. It is a day with no outages. Markets lose hours of trade when power drops and sirens sound. Small manufacturers idle machines, then pay overtime to catch up. Tourism hesitates when broadcast feeds fill with barricades. Foreign investors ask about rule of law, not mottos. They want to know whether the next change in tariffs or policing will arrive as a decree or a debate. At street level, entrepreneurs are gaming out the cost of one more generator against the odds of a stable grid by year’s end.
Infrastructure, shocks, and memory
Madagascar’s service failures do not live in a vacuum. Storm seasons test grid resilience and water networks that already leak more than they deliver. A year ago, a cyclone season that grazed Mayotte and Madagascar left clinics scrambling and rural electrification projects delayed. Every new outage sits on top of that memory, which is why residents judge promises by whether the lights actually come back and stay on. The IMF’s prescription for JIRAMA is blunt: publish recovery steps, cut technical losses, and align tariffs with costs in a way that protects the poorest. Without that discipline, the grid will keep failing and budgets will keep bleeding.
The movement and the mirror
Leaderless coalitions are hard to co-opt and easy to fracture. Organizers who insist they are not leaders face a specific trap. If they reject dialogue outright, they risk losing moderates who want tangible improvements more than a resignation. If they enter a process without guarantees, they risk becoming props in a script they cannot edit. A middle path exists. Attend the talks, insist on independent mediation, demand public dashboards where neighborhoods can see progress by circuit and by week, and reserve the right to return to the street if benchmarks slip.
The politics of trust
Trust is the cleanest currency in Madagascar’s politics, and it is scarce. It does not print from a decree. It accrues when officials speak plainly, accept responsibility, and set targets they can meet. It disappears when ministries claim success no one can see. For residents who have heard too many vows, a new government has a narrow window. It must manage security without humiliation, publish service targets without hedging, and sanction misconduct without waiting for a scandal to go viral. The alternative is a cycle that the country knows too well: rupture, reset, relapse.
What to watch next
Three signals will show whether this week is a turning point or another hard bend. First, the new cabinet list, especially the portfolios of energy and water. Second, the treatment of peaceful marches near universities and in working-class districts where grievances are most intense. Third, the fidelity of outage and repair reporting, and whether the government invites verification rather than guarding the narrative. If those signals point to competence, the streets may relax. If they point to theater, the chants will grow louder.
Comparative lessons
Across the region, youth movements have already changed calendars and cabinets. In Kathmandu, an interim government arrived only after students forced a public reckoning with force and corruption. That transition suggests a narrow lesson for Antananarivo: timelines and transparency can de-pressurize a city faster than rhetoric. Recently, Nepal’s Gen Z-driven protests moved the election clock without emptying the square of demands.
UN Human Rights expresses shock at the violent response by security forces in Madagascar. At least 22 people have been killed and more than 100 injured in protests over water and electricity. Accountability is essential.
Every discussion about electricity and water ends where corruption and procurement begin. Citizens know this. So do lenders. The fastest credibility gain is a public ledger. Publish contracts at the utility, list vendors, volumes, and prices, and allow independent auditors to flag anomalies in real time. The regional picture is instructive, from mining to power. Technical systems fail when secrecy becomes a business model. Madagascar does not need a morality play. It needs receipts.
