NOSY MITSIO: WHAT POSSIBLE “DEAL” BETWEEN AN EMIRATI INVESTORAND THE PRESIDENT OF MADAGASCAR? Newsletter N°227 (ENG)

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Emirati businessman Mohamed Alabbar expressed his interest in investing in tourism, agriculture, energy and infrastructure, particularly roads, during his visit to Madagascar in October 2024, through one of his companies, Emaar Properties or Eagle Hills (1). The latest news is that Nosy Mitsio is the first island to be the subject of a “deal” between the President and this famous businessman (2). The Nosy Mitsio archipelago lies to the north-west of Madagascar, between the island of Nosy Be and the town of Antsiranana Diégo-Suarez. Some Malagasies only learned about these beautiful islands in 2020, thanks to an open letter from civil society groups to the President, asking why the inhabitants of the largest islet, Nosy Mitsio, were not allowed to try to get land titles for their plots, unlike people in the rest of country (3).

The Minister in charge of Land at the time responded by saying that titling procedures were temporary suspended  in order to clean up the land situation in Nosy Mitsio (4) particularly because some owners had sold their plots. But four years later, the right to get land titles has still not been restored to the people of Nosy Mitsio. The real reason is probably a project to build a luxury tourist site in Nosy Mitsio.

Moreover, the opacity of information and the sequence of unusual events lead people to come up with various hypotheses about the Nosy Mitsio”deal”(2).

In June 2022, President Andry Rajoelina announced during an investors forum that several “5-star hotels” would be built, including one in Nosy Mitsio. Members of the TANY Collective were astonished (5), because in 2020 a Swiss investor had announced to the people of the island that he was constructing a hotel. But at the end of the environmental impact study, the local people learned quite unexpectedly that other infrastructures, such as villas and an airfield, would be built where their homes and farmlands currently were. The Nosy Mitsio inhabitants’ inabilty to seek land titles is  likely to be permanent, because according to the investment law, before renting land to an investor under a long term lease (i.e.18 to 99 years),  the State must title the land in its name. Have some state officials wanted to have free rein to dispose of the lands of Nosy Mitsio for the tourist project for years to come? (6)

The question arises as to what form this “deal” will take: sale or lease? We have already expressed our fear that Nosy Mitsio will be sold to an investor, as this was unfortunately already the case for Nosy Ankao in the northeastern part of Madagascar, near Vohémar (7). Is the information mentioning the recent takeover by an unknown entity of three areas on the island, rather distant from each other, one of which covers more than 200 hectares, true? These data suggest that rather than a single location being taken for the construction of a large luxury hotel, the project may occupy almost the entire island, appropriating it bit by bit. Unfortunately, the local communities – fokonolona – have not received any information about this project to date, neither from the investor nor from the local or national authorities, while the displacement of the local people was mentioned by a senior official during a recent exchange.

The statements of President Rajoelina on the expertise of Emaar Properties in the construction of tourist     “villages” (8) would corroborate the idea of a takeover of the entire island. The frequent presence of President Rajoelina’s eldest son during his official trips to Dubai had shocked the Malagasy public. The friendship between the Emirati investor and Rajoelina’s eldest son, who studied hospitality in Switzerland, suggests that a joint venture between the Emirati company and a company of the President of the Republic may be in the works, with a view to purchasing the land outright.

A meeting between Emaar Holding and several members of the government took place in October 2024 (9). However, collaborators of government officials who would normally be involved told residents of Nosy Mitsio who came to Antananarivo at the beginning of December said they had no information on this subject (10). If this is true, may the project be “qualified” as a presidential project, like many costly and controversial projects in Madagascar, when it is a personal project of the Rajoelina family ?

  • The sale or complicity in the sale of land to foreigners is always considered a betrayal in the collective thinking of most Malagasy people;
  • Messages on social networks have recently reproached the high leaders for wanting to sell Nosy Mitsio, which is a “heritage” inherited from the ancestors of the local communities, and therefore inalienable;
  • Media have been drawing attention to the 60,000 hectares of agricultural land that were already”made available” to the Emirati company Elite Agro in Bas-Mangoky, and highlighting the similarity between the current situation and the Daewoo affair in 2009 (11);
  • In a letter to the investor and the President of the Republic, civil society organizations have
    * demanded respect for the fundamental rights of the people of Nosy Mitsio to information and prior
         consent,
    * denounced the treatment of community land as a mere commodity,and
    * recalled that it is illegal under Malagasy law to privatizean entire island (12).


Is history repeating itself? (13)

31 December 2024

Collectif pour la défense des terres malgaches – TANY
patrimoinemalgache@gmail.com, https://terresmalgaches.info, Facebook : TANYterresmalgaches, X : CollectifTany, Instagram : collectif tany

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