page_title: Marc Ravalomanana
section_title: First term
hierarchical_section_title: Marc Ravalomanana / Presidency / First term
caption_attribution_description: Secretary Rice with Malagasy President Marc Ravalomanana (center, left of Secretary) and Millennium Challenge Corporation Chief Executive Officer Paul Applegarth (seated, right) and Malagasy Minister of Finance Radavidson Andriamparany (seated, left), at signing ceremony for the Millennium Challenge Corporation's Compact with the Republic of Madagascar. Persons (L-R) back row: unidentified unidentified Narisoa Rajaonarivony, Ambassador of Madagascar to the United States Marc Ravalomanana, President of Madagascar Condoleezza Rice, United States Secretary of State James D. McGee, Ambassador of the United States to Madagascar unidentified unidentified front row Radavidson Andriamparany, Minister of Finance of Madagascar Paul Applegarth, Millennium Challenge Corporation CEO
context_page_description: Marc Ravalomanana, GCSK is a Malagasy politician who was the President of Madagascar from 2002 to 2009. Born into a farming Merina family in Imerinkasinina, near the capital city of Antananarivo, Ravalomanana first rose to prominence as the founder and CEO of the vast dairy conglomerate TIKO, later launching successful wholesaler MAGRO and several additional companies.
  He entered politics upon founding the Tiako Iarivo political party in 1999 and successfully ran for the position of mayor of Antananarivo, holding the position from 1999 to 2001. As mayor he improved sanitary and security conditions in the city. In August 2001 he announced his candidacy as an independent in the December 2001 presidential election. He then took office as President in 2002 amidst a dispute over election results in which he successfully pressed his claim to have won a majority in the first round. Under the leadership of Jacques Sylla, Ravalomanana's Prime Minister from 2002 to 2007, the political party Tiako I Madagasikara was founded in 2002 to support Ravalomanana's presidency and came to dominate legislative and local elections.
context_section_description: Upon election to the presidency, Ravalomanana sought to mitigate the negative economic impact of the eight-month political standoff with Ratsiraka, which had cost Madagascar millions of dollars in lost tourism and trade revenue as well as damage to infrastructure, including bombed bridges and buildings damaged by arson. He enacted a series of new laws, policies and reforms that sought to efface remaining traces of Ratsiraka's socialist ideology and replace it with a firmly capitalist, market-driven economic environment.  In a break with tradition, the new head of state moved away from reliance on its principal trading partner, France, and cultivated relationships with partners such as Germany, the United States and South Korea as part of his strategy for Madagascar's economic development. He partnered with advisers at Harvard University to launch a rapid results initiative designed to spur rapid economic growth. In 2004 the World Bank approved his administration's Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper, entitled Madagascar Naturellement (Madagascar Naturally), in which he enshrined the principle of environmental conservation as inseparable from sustainable economic growth. The negative economic impact of the political crisis was gradually overcome by Ravalomanana's progressive economic and political policies, which encouraged investments in education and ecotourism, facilitated foreign direct investment and cultivated trading partnerships both regionally and internationally.
  At the 2003 Durban World Parks Congress he pledged to more than triple protected natural areas on the island from 1.6 million hectares (6,200 sq mi) to 6 million hectares (23,000 sq mi) – ten per cent of the country's land surface – over five years. In 2004 he established BIANCO (Bureau Indépendant Anti-Corruption), an anti-corruption bureau, which resulted in reduced corruption among Antananarivo's lower-level bureaucrats in particular, although high-level officials have not been prosecuted by the bureau. That same year, the International Monetary Fund agreed to write off half Madagascar's debt. Having met a set of stringent economic, governance and human rights criteria, in 2005 Madagascar became the first country to benefit from the Millennium Challenge Account, a new development fund managed by the United States. Legal reforms strengthened state institutions, particularly the judiciary, and produced improvements in human rights, civil liberties and the business climate. Consequently, the economy grew at an average annual rate of seven per cent throughout his presidency. Under his administration, hundreds of kilometers of roads were paved in formerly isolated rural areas. Dramatic improvements in education and health were also achieved under his administration. During Ravalomanana's first term, thousands of new primary schools and additional classrooms were constructed, older buildings were renovated and tens of thousands of new primary teachers were recruited and trained. Primary school fees were eliminated and kits containing basic school supplies were distributed to primary students. Logging in protected areas was outlawed until January 2009.
  After being elected president in 2002, Ravalomanana remained a prominent player in the private sector. The 2003 privatisation of SINPA (Societe d'lnteret National Malgache des Produits Agricoles), the state agricultural corporation, and SOMACODIS (Société Malgache de Collecte et de Distribution), the national trading corporation, provided Ravalomanana the opportunity to purchase both entities, which he incorporated under Tiko. He also created a public roads construction company, Asa Lalana Malagasy.
  The benefits of economic growth during the Ravalomanana administration were not evenly distributed, leading to higher costs of living for all Malagasy and a deepening poverty among much of the population with fewer able to increase their wealth. Detractors indicate a decline in purchasing power and dramatic inflation early in Ravalomanana's presidency as evidence of a failure to reduce poverty. Ravalomanana's critics
caption: Ravalomanana and former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at the signing of the Millennium Challenge Corporation compact, 2005
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