Some fifteen civil society organizations in Madagascar are calling for the construction of the Antananarivo-Tamatave motorway, which is supposed to cut through one of Madagascar’s last primary forests, to be suspended, especially as no environmental permit has been issued.
Construction of this project, entrusted to the Egyptian company Samcrete, was launched in December 2022 by the President of the Republic, for 924 million dollars. The 260km motorway will link the country’s main port to the capital.
Civil society has just issued a press release calling on the Malagasy authorities to suspend the work in progress and allow “prior inclusive public debate”.
The fifteen or so signatories to the document are calling for the essential elements of the motorway’s construction to be discussed in full transparency, namely the complete route, the origin and actual volume of land transactions, respect for land ownership rights, and the socio-economic and environmental losses and benefits incurred.
In the press release, the signatories also pointed out the negative effects of this project on the environment, given that the route of the motorway would have to “cross protected sites that are emblematic and invaluable for their biological and ecosystem wealth”, while several of them are eligible for carbon credits.
On 15th May, the Director General of the Office National de l’Environnement announced that no environmental permit had yet been issued for this project and that it, therefore, did not comply with the legal procedure. This announcement led to his dismissal by the Council of Ministers 48 hours later.