Since early July 2026, Madagascar has been grappling with simultaneous rolling blackouts across its main economic cities. In Toamasina, Antsiranana and Antananarivo, power cuts are multiplying amid a convergence of technical failures at Jirama and its private energy subcontractors.
Three Cities, Three Simultaneous Crises
In Antsiranana, the situation is most acute: Enelec, the private producer contracted to supply the city, promised 4.2 MW of capacity but is delivering only 1.6 MW — a shortfall of over 60%. The Energy Minister visited to assess a situation that local operators describe as "prolonged and unacceptable."
In Toamasina, Madagascar's main port and a logistics hub currently undergoing major expansion, rolling cuts reach two hours per neighbourhood, directly disrupting commercial and industrial operations. In Antananarivo, 45-minute outages were recorded in mid-July, linked to maintenance downtime on Afripower Mandroseza's DG2 generator.
A Cascade of Technical Failures
The crisis is multi-causal: a combustion turbine (TAC 1) breakdown at Afripower, heavy maintenance by Chelsea Énergie on Enelec facilities, reduced solar output during the cold season, and — underlying all of this — accumulated payment delays by Jirama to its suppliers, limiting preventive maintenance in a well-documented vicious cycle.
Government Response
The Ministry of Energy announced the emergency delivery of two 500 kW generator sets to the Amporaha facility in Antsiranana. A response broadly seen as inadequate given the scale of the capacity gap to be filled.
Why This Matters
The simultaneous failure across three major economic hubs is striking at a critical juncture. Toamasina handles Madagascar's key export flows (graphite, vanilla, minerals); Antsiranana is a growing tourism and maritime hub. Local operators consistently rank electricity unreliability as the top barrier to foreign investment. The contractual governance between Jirama and its private producers is now under intense public and parliamentary scrutiny.