From famine to hope: Women reshape Madagascar

Women and girls make up 60% of the world’s food insecure - yet they are also at the frontline of feeding their communities.

In southern Madagascar, forests no longer cast shade over the villages of Androy. Once celebrated as the “Green Island” for its extraordinary biodiversity, Madagascar is now known as the “Red Island”, its deep red soil exposed by decades of deforestation, drought and environmental collapse. The land has turned to dust, harvests have failed and famine has followed.

Lying off the south-eastern coast of Africa, Madagascar has been pushed into crisis by a deadly combination of climate change, poverty and environmental degradation. In 2021, more than 1.6 million people faced acute food insecurity, while nearly half of all children under five were chronically malnourished. Rainfall has become increasingly unpredictable, and when it does arrive it often comes as destructive cyclones, wiping out entire seasons of crops. Today, Madagascar is one of the most food insecure countries in the world.

Women and children are the most vulnerable, despite the fact that women produce around 80% of the country’s food yet own less than 10% of the land.

Journalist Georgie Styles travels from the war-like scenes and dust-choked streets of Ambovombe, the capital of the Androy region, to the windswept farms of the Tsimananada commune. Along the way, she meets women from across Madagascar who are defying famine and patriarchal norms, experimenting with agro-ecological farming and adapting to a rapidly changing climate, determined not just to survive, but to reclaim their land and their future.

Produced and Presented by Georgie Styles
Sound Design and Mix by Rowan Bishop
A 2 Degree’s West Production for BBC World Service