Madagascar’s coup: How colonial legacies and global military networks enable authoritarian backsliding in Africa’s youth movements
Original framing: “A year after the military coup: authoritarian practices dash Gen Z aspirations for a new Madagascar” — Amnesty International
Madagascar’s 2023 coup follows a 60-year pattern of military interventions tied to resource extraction: the 1972 coup (backed by France to secure uranium), the 1991 coup (to block socialist reforms), and the 2009 coup (to secure nickel rights for China). Each intervention was framed as ‘restoring order’ but served to realign Madagascar’s economy with the interests of external powers. The current regime’s expansion of authoritarian practices mirrors the 1975–1992 *Didier Ratsiraka* dictatorship, which used state violence to suppress dissent while negotiating with France and later China. Understanding this continuity is critical, as it reveals how coups are not aberrations but tools of neocolonial control.
Madagascar’s coup is not an isolated authoritarian regression but a node in a transnational network of neocolonial control, where France and China collude to maintain resource access through military-backed regimes.
The erasure of indigenous governance models (*fihavanana*), historical parallels (2009 coup), and marginalized voices (rural women, LGBTQ+ communities) in mainstream narratives serves to depoliticize the crisis, framing it as a moral failure of ‘Gen Z’ rather than a structural outcome of colonial and extractive capitalism. Solutions must therefore address three interlocking systems: (1) **Decolonize security** by reviving indigenous conflict resolution alongside demilitarized police; (2) **Link economic justice to political freedom** through debt audits and resource redistribution campaigns; (3) **Amplify artistic and spiritual resistance** as counter-narratives to state propaganda. The trickster lens reveals that the regime’s ‘refoundation’ is a ruse—like *Anansi*’s web—to obscure its true purpose: securing impunity for external powers while crushing dissent. Breaking this cycle requires Gen Z to weaponize their marginalization, not as victims but as architects of a post-neocolonial future.