Want to do business in Madagascar? You have come to the right place. Here are some of the best business ideas in Madagascar that anyone can take advantage of.

With its expanding economy, young and skilled labor force and affordable salary level, Madagascar is becoming an increasingly interesting business destination for foreign investors. 

If you want to do business in Madagascar, but you are not sure where to start – this article is for you. 

In this article, we will discuss some the best business ideas in Madagascar right now. We will continue to update this list regularly to keep you up-to-date with the latest and best business opportunities in Madagascar.

If you’re ready to start your business now, Madagascar Invest can help you register a company in Madagascar.

Table of Contents

• Real Estate Development 
• Real Estate Agency 
• Agribusiness 
• Tourism
• Import
• Export 
• Education
• Online Business

Business Idea #1: Real Estate

According to us, real estate is one of the most interesting long-term business ideas here in Madagascar 

What makes real estate such a great business opportunity?

As the economy of Madagascar improves, the middle class is growing larger and wealthier.

The many people now entering the middle and upper classes are looking for both quality housing, affordable housing, as well as upscale housing. Apartments and villas are in increasingly high demand, especially around the capital region of Antananarivo.

There is a regular real estate boom happening in Madagascar, and this situation may very well continue over the next 30-50 years as the middle class continues to grow and demand better access to housing.

Investors looking to take part in this amazing opportunity can tap into the growing real estate market in several ways.

One of the easiest ways to get started is by simply purchasing existing real estate in Madagascar.

This requires a pretty significant upfront investment (although Madagascar real estate remains very affordable compared to developed countries) – but there is a great potential for profits. 

Buying up properties and renting them out or renovating and reselling them won’t make you rich overnight, but it’s a good, long term business opportunity. 

Real Estate Business Ideas

Here are some of the most interesting real estate business ideas in Madagascar.

Real Estate Agency

As a property market, Madagascar remains underdeveloped, and so there is a lack of reliable, professional, and trustworthy real estate agents in Madagascar.

The few real estate agents that operate in the country do a very poor job.

Now, to be fair, this is also because the local population do not use real estate agents when looking to buy or rent a property – they use middlemen, or “mpanera”.

However, international expats coming to Madagascar and looking for properties may not be aware of the local customs. They naturally go searching for a real estate agent when wanting to source a property. Only to find that the real estate agents in Madagascar are both slow and unreliable. 

Real estate agents overprice their properties, they show up late for appointments (if they even show up), they display properties that have already been sold, they have no online presence, and they often don’t speak English (can’t communicate with clients).

In summary: there is a need for professional real estate agents in Madagascar. 

Anyone starting a reliable real estate agency targeting foreign buyers would effectively be able to corner a big part of the market.

Cost to start a real estate agency in Madagascar

A real estate agency is a type of business which can be started even with a relatively low budget. As little as a few hundred US dollars/euros is all you really need to start a real estate agency business in Madagascar.

What you need are properties to sell, and a platform where you can display the properties to potential buyers.

In Madagascar, a large part of the population use Facebook for various transactions. There are many real estate agents that operate on Facebook, and this is a valid and acceptable way to look for properties in Madagascar.

If you have properties to sell, starting a Facebook page and running traffic to your page and your real estate offer is a way to start a real estate agency in Madagascar at a low budget.

Alternatively, you can build a real estate platform on a website that you own. This method may require a slightly bigger investment and may not garner as much traffic or interest from clients, as a smaller chunk of the Malagasy population use internet/Google to search for properties. But this may be a good long-term idea, as it can be expected that more and more people will use this method to search for properties in the future.

Real Estate Development

A good long-term real estate business idea in Madagascar is construction and real estate development. 

Real estate development refers to the action of acquiring a property and improving it, in order to sell it at a later time for profit.

Undeveloped properties can be acquired in the up-and-coming outskirts of Tana at very affordable prices (€10-20 per square meter).

Investors can buy smaller plots and build single family housing, or larger plots and subdivide the land into smaller parcels.

Cost to start a real estate development business in Madagascar

Starting a real estate development business in Madagascar is certainly not the cheapest business idea. It requires a significant chunk of money to use as upfront investment in order to purchase a property and develop the property.

Granted, the amount of money you need to start this type of business in Madagascar is significantly lower than in a developed country. In a developed country, you would probably need at least a few hundred thousand US dollars/euros to even consider starting a real estate development company. But the easy access to cheap credit in developed countries makes it easier to get started.

In Madagascar, it is difficult to access cheap credit from banks and financial institutions at an affordable interest rate. Therefore, it is necessary that you already have access to all the cash you will need to start the business.

You could potentially start a real estate development company in Madagascar with as little as 50,000 US dollars/euros, perhaps even less than that, if you’re on a tight budget.

A word of caution: do not venture into the world of real estate in Madagascar unprepared. There are plenty of pitfalls. You must team up with the right people to make sure you get the best advice when starting a real estate business in Madagascar.

Here at Madagascar Invest, we have years of experience buying and developing properties in Madagascar. We remain at your disposal, should you require any advice about property development.

Business Idea # 2: Agribusiness

If you are looking to start a business in Madagascar, you may want to start an agribusiness. 

What is an agribusiness?

An agribusiness is a business that revolves around growing and selling agricultural products such as fruits, vegetables, and so forth.

Starting an agribusiness venture in Madagascar is a great opportunity, because the barrier to entry is so low – anyone can do it.

Anyone can buy or rent a small piece of land and start growing food. Madagascar has so much farmland available at very low prices. 

Furthermore, Madagascar is blessed with an abundance of different landscapes and climate zones, making it perfectly suited for growing a large variety of fruits, vegetables, herbs, nuts, spices, and more.

Some of the most interesting products you could grow are:

• Rice
• Litchi
• Mangos
• Avocados
• Vanilla
• Beans
• Cloves
• And more

Investors wishing to start an agribusiness in Madagascar can grow food for either the expanding domestic market, or for the enormous and insatiable international market.

Within Madagascar itself, the demand for staple foods such as rice, potatoes and other common vegetables and fruits is huge.

At the international level, there is a steadily growing demand for agricultural products from Madagascar.

Products like litchi and vanilla (of which Madagascar is the world’s largest producer) are popular around the world, and sell at a premium on the international market.

Processing Agricultural Products

Processing agricultural products is a great way to add value to the many available products such as fruits and vegetables already being grown in Madagascar.

For example, dried fruits that have been cut, peeled, and packaged are worth far more per kilo than fruits purchased fresh. Such dried fruit products could be sold both locally, as well as on the international market.

In addition, freeze dried products is something that, as of yet, is completely absent from the local Malagasy market. The first business to start freeze drying fruits and other agricultural products from Madagascar at an industrial scale would have a massive competitive advantage, as no one else is currently exploiting this business opportunity.

Cost of starting a processed agricultural products business in Madagascar

Starting this type of business can be accomplished with as little as €/$3,000 for a small dried fruits business, and can run up to €/$75-100,000 if the investor wishes to establish a fully developed processing facility.

Modernized Farming Business

Madagascar may be large, but the amount of food being grown in Madagascar is no where close to capacity. This is because there is a lack of sophisticated farming methods and equipment in the country.

Adding a level of sophistication to the farming process by using farming equipment or tools would give the investor a clear advantage and help maximise profits.

If you are a budget investor and cannot afford to invest in farming equipment, a good solution is to take advantage of the affordable and highly skilled farming labor force in Madagascar.

This will allow you to get your agribusiness started at almost any budget.

Business Idea #3: Tourism

Tourism is one of Madagascar’s most important industries.

Although the Malagasy tourism industry pales in comparison to destinations like Thailand or the Philippines, tourism actually accounts for more than 15% of Madagascar’s GDP.

And even though the number of annual tourists is still relatively low at around 500,000 visitors per year, this number is expected to grow substantially over the next 5-10 years as Madagascar develops as a tourist destination. 

Of course, the coronavirus put a temporary stick in the wheel of this development.

The virus and the ensuing global pandemic devastated the tourism sector in Madagascar, as it did in large parts of the world. 

Many local tour operators and smaller hotels were forced to go out of business due to a sudden and complete lack of customers.

Many small businesses in Madagascar did not have the liquidity to survive for very long without customers.

What makes tourism such a great business idea in Madagascar?

While it is tragic that many businesses were forced to shut down in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, the bright side is that this has freed up lots of space in the otherwise competitive Madagascar tourism market.

As a prospective tourism operator, you can get in now and fill a void that’s been left in the market.

In other words, now is the perfect time to start a tourism business in Madagascar.

COVID hasn’t changed global tourism as much as one could have feared, and for Madagascar the fundamentals remain unchanged: the red island is set to become a major tourist destination over the coming years.

This means that the country will need everything from restaurants to hotels, bed and breakfasts, tour operators, rental companies, guides, cars, boats, you name it.

Starting a business within any of these areas could prove highly profitable. 

Now, it’s important to remember that you probably won’t see instant returns when starting a business in the tourism industry. After all, it will take some time for tourism to reach previous years levels – let alone reach new record levels.

So an investment into the Malagasy tourism industry is a long-term play that will require patience, hard work and dedication.

But if you decide to give it a shot, and if you invest during this time of limited competition, you have a unique opportunity to become an established player in the industry. 

Tourism Business Ideas

Accomodation (Hotel, Guest House, Bed & Breakfast)

To support the growth in tourism which is expected to occur in Madagascar over the next 10-20 years, there is one thing that the country will need more than anything else: more beds.

By providing accomodation options, you’re essentially expanding the amount of potential tourists that the country can welcome. This can be done by opening a hotel, or if you’re on a smaller budget, a guest house or a bed and breakfast.

There is a huge demand for more accomodation all over the island, especially in tourism hot spots such as on the islands of Nosy Be or Sainte Marie, or in places like Tulear, Diego Suarez, and Mahajanga.

Building more accomodation in Madagascar is a business idea that you almost can’t go wrong with. The demand for quality accomodation in certain areas is so high already, and the demand is only expected to rise more in the coming years.

Cost to start a hotel/accomodation business in Madagascar

The cost of dstarting this type of business in Madagascar is extremely variable, depending on various factors such as location, the type of accomodation you wish to build, and how many rooms you are looking to offer.

You can probably build a small guest house in a semi-popular up-and-coming location such as Mahambo or with as little as 30-50,000 US dollars/euros. This will enable you to own and manage your own place.

Ecotourism

Ecotourism is one of the latest buzz words in the tourism and hospitality industry.

Ecotourism is an ecologically responsible approach to tourism. It means offering a touristic experience that is less harmful to the environment than a classic tourism experience.

Some examples of ecotouristic experiences include ecolodges, where a lodge is build in sync with nature, and not at the cost of the natural environment.

Some ecotouristic experiences even seek to be regenerative, whereby they employ the help of vacationers to actually regenerate the natural environment. This could be by planting trees in the adjacent area around the ecolodge.

Madagascar has a tremendous potential when it comes to ecotourism. The country is suffering from the consequences of local and global environmental changes, and ecolodges can help reverse this trend by building environmentally responsible accomodation, and using the profits of the operation to regenerate the surrounding environment.

Furthermore, Madagascar is lacking behind in the global advancement of ecotourism. Whereas there are many ecolodges available in more developed touristic markets such as Europe, Mexico and South-East Asia, there are only very few ecotouristic options for environmentally-conscious travelers in Madagascar. This presents an obvious business opportunity.

Cost of starting an ecotourism business in Madagascar

Starting an ecotourism business in Madagascar can be achieved with a wide range of different budgets. Certainly, if the budget allows, one could envision building a major ecotourism resort in one of the more popular tourist hubs such as on Nosy Be or Sainte Marie. Such an endeavour could easily run into the several hundred thousand US dollars/euros.

But starting an ecotourism business in Madagascar does not have to be overly expensive either. One could imagine building a few guest houses on a fairly remote property with high natural beauty. This could be achieved with less than €/$100,000.

Oftentimes, environmental holidaymakers are willing to compromise on the quality of the accomodation, in order to have a more environmentally friendly vacation and put less of a burden on the local ecosystems.

Business Idea #4: Export

Despite being a small economy, Madagascar has an abundance of unique and interesting products that you can export to the world.

The most popular products to export from Madagascar are consumer goods. This includes food items such as agricultural products (think beans, vanilla, nuts and more).

Besides agricultural products, Madagascar also has plenty of locally processed food items you can export. There are too many to name, but some good examples include rum, juice, tea, coffee, spices, cheese, wine, jam, essential oils, and much more.

Another interesting export opportunity are textiles. Madagascar is becoming a local powerhouse in the textile manufacturing industry, due to its low wages.

Exporting products from Madagascar is a great way to support the local economy while promoting Malagasy products to the world.

To sell Malagasy products abroad, you can reach out to established retailers in your home country. 

Alternatively, you can set up your own store (either a physical store or an ecommerce store) and sell products from Madagascar directly to consumers. 

Business Idea #5: Import

Importing products to Madagascar from other countries is another great business opportunity.

Madagascar imports a wide variety of different items, including cars, electronics, food, and much more.

Many goods that are widely available in developed countries can be difficult to find in Madagascar. This presents a great opportunity for investors who are willing to import products to Madagascar.

In our experience, consumer electronics such as laptops and smartphones are especially expensive in Madagascar due to the high demand and low supply.

So importing consumer electronics and selling them in the domestic market is a very interesting business opportunity. 

The relatively small price of consumer electronics means that this business can be started even by investors on a limited budget. 

The best way to get started selling consumer goods in Madagascar is by selling directly to the consumer and avoiding any established retailers or middlemen.

Renting retail space and setting up your own shop instead of selling through another retailer will give you much higher profit margins. 

Alternatively, if you are on a limited budget, another way to get started with very low overhead is to sell your goods on Facebook.

Facebook businesses are huge in Madagascar, as a large part of the population is accustomed to buying goods through Facebook.

Importing food items

Other things that are commonly imported include rice and other food items. 

Malagasy people consume a lot of rice, and a large part of the country’s arable land is devoted to rice cultivation, however, Madagascar does not produce enough rice to satisfy the domestic demand.

Therefore, rice is imported in great quantities, especially from countries like Pakistan and India.

There are plenty of other items which can be imported to Madagascar. The list is too long to mention here. But as an aspiring entrepreneur, the best thing you can do is to identify which products are in high demand and import those products to Madagascar.

Business Idea #6: Education 

If you want to start a business that helps people in a real and tangible way, you should look into starting an education business in Madagascar.

Public schools in Madagascar are underfunded and poorly equipped, making it impossible for them to teach students anything beyond the most basic skills. This leads people to seek out education on their own, through private schools and learning facilities. 

The people of Madagascar are hungry for education, and you can make a business out of providing people with education, while supporting the development of the country at the same time. 

There are a number of ways to start an education business. For example, you can either start a private school for children, or a school where adults can take courses in different subjects.

One segment of the population which are especially interested in education are young adults.

Young adults understand that education is the key to developing in Madagascar.

Some of the subjects that are in high demand among young adults in Madagascar are foreign languages, programming, entrepreneurship, and more.

Such skills may help Malagasy people obtain a well-paying job in a local company, or find a job abroad. This is why education is in such high demand.

Business Idea #7: Online Business

An online business is a type of business that sells services through the internet to customers around the world.

An online business can come in many forms, and the types of services which you can sell range from content writing to graphic design, customer support, social media marketing, web development and much more.

With its highly skilled yet affordable workforce, Madagascar is the perfect place to start an online business. 

You can start an online business within any industry of your choice, hire talent locally and sell it to clients anywhere in the world. 

Madagascar is made up of great programmers, great graphic designers, marketers and writers. You have all the talent available here to start a successful online business. 

Digital services refers to services that are sold or offered to clients online. Some popular examples of digital services include:

• Digital marketing
• Social media management
• Content writing 
• Graphic Design

One potential business idea would be to open a digital agency in Madagascar that sells any of the above mentioned services to clients all over the world.

In Madagascar you will find plenty of young and skilled people and you will have no shortage of options when it comes to hiring qualified workers.

These digital services are in demand all over the world, and you can start a company right here in Madagascar that has the entire world as its marketplace.

Start your business in Madagascar today 

Now that you are familiar with some of the best business ideas in Madagascar, there’s only one thing left to do: act now and open your business in Madagascar!

Madagascar Invest is here to help you turn your business idea into reality, we can help you set up your company in Madagascar quickly and affordably.