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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Madagascar
Index
Figure 2. Madagascar: Administrative Divisions, 1994
THE REPUBLIC OF MADAGASCAR, formerly known as the
Malagasy
Republic and the Democratic Republic of Madagascar, has
undergone
significant socioeconomic and political changes during the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Occupying a strategic
location off the southeast coast of Africa, the island
historically became the target of British and French
imperial
ambitions. Ultimately, the competition resulted in French
colonization at the end of the nineteenth century. The
country
gained full independence from colonial rule on June 26,
1960.
Philibert Tsiranana headed the conservative regime of the
First
Republic, which was superseded in 1975 by a
Marxist-oriented
military regime under Lieutenant Commander Didier
Ratsiraka.
In the face of rising political dissent and
socioeconomic
decline that reached its height at the beginning of the
1990s,
the Second Republic succumbed to the wave of
democratization
spreading throughout the African continent. On March 27,
1993,
the inauguration of Albert Zafy as the third elected
president of
Madagascar since independence marked the beginning of the
Third
Republic.
Data as of August 1994
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