Transportation and Telecommunications in Madagascar
The following is excerped from the Country Studies--Area Handbook program of the U.S. Department of the Army. The original version of this text is available at the Library of Congress.
Full index of Country Studies-Madagascar
The expansion of the economy is hindered by an
inadequate
transportation system that deteriorated throughout the
1980s
(see
fig. 4). Only 4,000 kilometers (10 percent) of an
estimated
40,000-kilometer road network is asphalted (no all-weather
road
links the capital with the southern and northern extremes
of the
island), and the state-controlled railroad consists of
1,095
kilometers of track in two limited (and separate) railroad
systems. The first connects the capital of Antananarivo
with the
port city of Toamasina, the rice-producing area of Lake
Alaotra,
and the town of Antsirabe; the second connects the
regional
capital of Fianarantsoa with the coastal town of Manakara.
The country's ports and airports fare better than the
land or
rail network. Madagascar has fifteen major ports along the
4,828-
kilometer coastline, of which Toamasina, Mahajanga, and
Antsiranana are the most important. The air network
revolves
around the main international airport, Ivato-Antananarivo.
The
country technically contains 211 airfields, but only
approximately 50 percent are usable, and only thirty
maintain
permanent-surface runways. Whereas the national airline,
Air
Madagascar, is two-thirds owned by the government (Air
France
owns the remaining one-third), twelve airports (including
IvatoAntananarivo ) were taken over in 1990 by a private
company,
Aéroports de Madagascar.
In 1994 Madagascar's telecommunication system was
sparse,
serving only commercial users and residents of large towns
and
cities. Almost 60 percent of the country's 27,200
telephones were
located in Antananarivo in 1989. Figures for that year
showed
that the country averaged only three telephones per 1,000
inhabitants, and service was limited to government
offices, large
companies, and a few wealthy families in urban areas. The
telecommunications system deteriorated appreciably during
the
1980s so that Madagascar had fewer telephones in 1994 than
in
1975. Two satellite ground stations near the capital
provide
excellent international links via the International
Telecommunications Satellite Corporation's (Intelsat's)
Indian
Ocean satellite and the Symphonie ground station, working
with a
European telecommunications satellite.
Broadcast services are thinly scattered countrywide.
The
entire country has only seventeen mediumwave amplitude
modulation
(AM) radio stations--a powerful transmitter in the capital
and
sixteen low-power repeaters in other cities. A
government-owned,
AM shortwave station broadcasting in French and Malagasy
on five
frequencies reaches listeners in remote locations and in
neighboring countries. In addition, Radio Nederlands has a
powerful station in western Madagascar that relays Radio
Nederlands's programs throughout Africa and the Indian
Ocean on
shortwave frequencies. Antananarivo and two other cities
each
have a single frequency modulation (FM) station.
Thirty-seven
low-power television transmitters broadcast for three and
a half
hours daily in urban areas.
Data as of August 1994
This is excerped from the Country Studies--Area Handbook program of the U.S. Department of the Army. The original version of this text is available at the Library of Congress.
Full index of Country Studies-Madagascar
Almost all pictures on this site were taken with a Konica Minolta
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