MADAGASCAR – DAY 11. Is there hope for Madagascar?

Hope always dies last. But we’ve never seen this kind of poverty, never been to villages that have felt so poor and hopeless. Here are a few glimpses of it all. Many people wear clothes that barely hang together by threads. Some families live crammed into crooked bamboo huts, barely 8–10 square metres in size. A mother loosens the soil in her garden with a small stick. The village mayor’s “office” is a dim concrete bunker with no electricity, one table, and four chairs. Most people in rural areas have never touched a computer and their main means of communication is an old button phone.

Sanitary conditions are sometimes heartbreaking. Clean water is available only in some villages, and in densely built areas there’s often no space left for toilets. So people relieve themselves basically behind their houses and for bigger needs they go to the school or nearby forest. In larger villages, the forests are sometimes so full of human waste that we were politely advised not to go there – to avoid the honoured guests accidentally stepping in s***.

Compared to this, the houses in Daga looked like mansions, and the villages like botanical gardens. Some things, however, are better in Madagascar. Although the roads are in poor condition, there isn’t the same level of isolation as in Daga. Even in smaller towns there are pharmacies with basic supplies and shops with everyday goods. Farmers can bring tomatoes and herbs to the market, and if you have money, a 70-year-old Mercedes will deliver building materials or furniture right to the middle of the village. Trade and transport work.

In general, poverty in a country cannot be reduced without proportionally reducing the number of people who farm simply to feed themselves and survive. There need to be real jobs – in construction, manufacturing, and services. And those jobs must grow faster than the population as a whole. Since 2000, Madagascar’s population has doubled. And although the number of births per woman has dropped from six to about four, in rural areas and among poorer people it’s still very high. If more jobs would appear in cities, people would move from villages, reducing the pressure on land and making agriculture more flexible and efficient.

Unfortunately, job growth is hindered by corruption, poor infrastructure, and shortcomings in education. At some point, tensions exceed the critical limit, a new wave of protests erupts, and steam is let off. But then everything continues as before. Because changing all of this is hard. People in the villages live in their own rhythm, and the vast majority aren’t very interested in what happens outside. I believe many have never left their home region. Several major interest groups are also opposed to change – policemen, judges, soldiers. Many have had to pay someone somewhere to get a position, and with that comes the right to demand “payments” from others in turn. And who would like it if, after paying for a ticket, the show suddenly ended halfway?

Of course, there are also those who sincerely hope for change and fight for it – young people in the cities, idealists, and the small middle class who have managed to climb out of poverty but haven’t wanted or been able to get a piece of the modest pie. And probably also those who hope to get closer to the tap themselves in the future.

So, is there hope? Hope dies last. Sometimes, someone appears who can rise above and see further and pull others along too. But what about us? What could our role be here? In general, we’ve had two criteria when evaluating a potential project:

Could it work as a business? Probably yes – there is definitely demand for quality coffee and tea from Madagascar.

Would our actions have a meaningful impact, could we actually change something? Both yes and no. In terms of the product, definitely. For the community, we might be able to provide a few new tools and teach how to use them. Whether they’d actually use them, we don’t know yet.

Hopelessness can also be a challenge. It’s always exciting to prove you can pull off something others thought impossible. Madagascar would definitely be our most hopeless project so far. Maybe also the most exciting one…?

But Renegade has always been a community project. We can’t do something our supporters and customers don’t believe in at least on the idea level.

So what do you think – is Madagascar worth trying? To give it a chance, even if it means taking the risk that it might not work? Or should we just keep walking, like so many before us?