The youth-led protests that eventually brought down Madagascar’s President Andry Rajoelina were sparked, in part, by his attempt to use large-scale urban infrastructure projects as a means of consolidating power.

Rajoelina’s government placed urban mega-projects at the centre of its strategy to assert power and legitimacy. These projects enabled him to create and channel rents to key allies, while anchoring his rule in Malagasy history and territory. They were also meant to transform the spatial and political imaginaries of the state through monumental visions of modernity and development. By spatial and political imaginaries, I mean the contested ways leaders and citizens imagine space and power, and what a modern city and a legitimate government should look like.

Yet these projects did little to meet the needs of most Malagasy citizens. Those that might have done so, such as social housing schemes, were left unfinished or poorly realised.

By the time Rajoelina, who came into power via a coup in 2009, was re-elected for a third term in late 2023, his legitimacy was already deeply contested. Months of daily power and water cuts in the capital city, Antananarivo, combined with the launch of a highly energy-consuming cable car, sparked protests that ultimately led to his overthrow.

After three weeks of intense protests in major cities, Rajoelina fled the country. The army seized power, suspended the constitution, and dissolved key political and judicial institutions. It announced a transitional period.

It is not the first time since independence in 1960 that the military has intervened. Rajoelina was ousted by the same elite unit, the CAPSAT, that helped him seize power in 2009.

For the past four years, I have conducted doctoral research on the politics of urban planning and urban development in Antananarivo. Drawing on this work, this article shows how the very urban strategies through which Rajoelina sought to consolidate power contributed to his downfall. Once it became clear that urban infrastructure projects weren’t going to meet pressing social needs, they quickly generated disillusionment and anger.

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Both my research and the regime’s collapse highlight the pitfalls of relying on large-scale infrastructure projects to gain political authority in a highly unstable and competitive political system.

Building power and legitimacy through the capital

Tapping into youth disillusioned with the approach of his predecessor, President Marc Ravalomanana, Rajoelina rose to power in 2009 through a coup.

At only 35, Rajoelina, a former DJ and head of print and media companies, embodied renewal and the hopes of the Malagasy youth. He led a transitional government until 2013. He was then elected into office in 2018. The opposition boycotted the 2023 elections amid growing popular discontent.

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From the outset, Rajoelina placed large-scale infrastructure construction at the centre of his political agenda.

In Antananarivo, numerous “presidential projects” were launched. These included a cable car, an urban train, a new city, colosseums, stadiums and social housing. Most of them were painted in the regime’s orange colours. They were strategically located in highly visible areas of the capital and its periphery. In parallel, Rajoelina reworked the national history and territory by renaming key sites in the city.

As I have argued elsewhere, these initiatives played a crucial role in Rajoelina’s attempts to build political authority. Infrastructure development served as an important source of rents he used to secure the loyalty of key allies and further centralise power in the presidency.

The projects were also symbolic, combining elements of tradition and modernity. They were an opportunity for staging state spectacles that aimed at legitimising his increasingly authoritarian rule.

When symbols of power backfire

Yet the spectacle turned against its orchestrator. While some projects had long been contested, the disillusionment reached its peak in 2025. Presidential projects crystallised growing popular anger over the corruption of the regime and the deteriorating living conditions.

In February 2025, in the municipality of Imerintsiatosika, 30km west of the capital city, demonstrations erupted in response to the threat of land seizure and eviction. It is here that the new city of Tanamasoandro was planned to serve as a potential new capital.

In late August 2025, the cable car, finally put into operation for a few hours a day more than a year after its completion, reignited controversy over government spending priorities. The vast majority of the population can’t afford the cable car – 80% of the people live below the poverty line.

The cable car costs an estimated €162,000 (US$188,725) per month in electricity bills. This in a city where power cuts have become a daily occurrence.

Far from serving as a symbol of progress and modernity, the “longest cable car in Africa” came to embody Rajoelina’s disconnection from the needs of the population and the corruption of a regime perceived as serving only its elites.

The battle for urban space

The spark that ignited the current crisis was the violent arrest of opposition municipal councillors on 19 September. The councillors had demanded that the Senate address the water and electricity shortages and their severe impact on the population.

More than 50% of businesses reported electricity outages, with 6.3 outages in a typical month lasting an average of 3.9 hours each, costing firms an average of 24% of annual sales, according to a February 2025 World bank review of the country’s economy. About 20.5% of firms experienced an average of two water shortages a month. Power cuts lasted up to 12 hours a day over the weeks preceding the coup. Students, poor families, and street traders were hit hard as they could not afford generators.

Inspired by Gen Z uprisings around the globe, Malagasy youth took to the streets on 25 September. What began as protests over basic utilities quickly expanded into a broader contestation of Rajoelina’s regime. Artists, trade unions, civil society organisations and politicians joined the movement.

At the spatial heart of the protests were two of Antananarivo’s most politically symbolic squares. The garden of Ambohijatovo, renamed Democracy Square (Kianjan’ny demokrasia) by Rajoelina himself in 2009, had previously hosted 35,000 of his supporters against Ravalomanana. On 1 October, demonstrators managed to gain access to the square after confronting the police, marking an important symbolic victory for the movement.

Ten days later, on 11 October, protesters, now joined by elements of the army, took over 13 May Square (Kianjan’ny 13 mai), the symbolic centre of Malagasy political protests since the 1970s.

Rajoelina attempted to counter the movement. He called his supporters to gather at the Colosseum Antsonjombe, built during the transition (2009-2013). It was presented at the time as the “biggest socio-cultural venue in the Indian Ocean and in Africa”.

However, the colosseum, which was full at its inauguration in 2012, was now empty, illustrating the president’s isolation.

Protesters also targeted key symbols of the presidency. The headquarters of Rajoelina’s printing company was burned down. So were the cable car and the urban train stations. The urban trains had never been put into service.

What Rajoelina had intended as symbols of power and modernity had thus become symbols of failure. They exposed Rajoelina’s vanished legitimacy and the fragile foundations of a power largely built on representation.

The afterlife of urban infrastructures

Rajoelina’s case illustrates that infrastructure construction can be a double-edged strategy. It can be used to assert power in authoritarian contexts, but it risks backfiring when a regime lacks the means to realise its ambitions. Rajoelina’s urban projects initially captured the imagination of the youth and the wider population. But as they failed to meet pressing social needs, they quickly generated disillusionment and anger.

An official from the Antananarivo municipality told me in late 2022 the cable car, unilaterally imposed by the presidency, was a “thorn in the side” of municipal authorities and “risks becoming a white elephant”. The same could be said of all presidential infrastructure projects, inseparable from a regime that had fallen out of favour.

The case of Madagascar raises broader questions about the afterlife of urban infrastructure projects closely associated with fallen leaders. How will they be maintained, repurposed, or abandoned? What consequences will they have for urban and national governance, residents’ lives and hopes, and the imaginaries of power in the years ahead?

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Fanny Voélin, University of Bern

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Fanny Voélin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.