World’s first 3D-printed school planned for Madagascar
The school is a pilot project and, looking to the future, Thinking Huts hopes to expand the idea to provide more schools elsewhere in Madagascar, and even throughout in the world.
Madagascar
Madagascar commits to planting 60 million trees
To celebrate 60 years of independence, Madagascar President Andry Rajoelina has pledged to plant 60 million new trees and restore the island to the green haven it once was.
Madagascar declares independence from France, ending six decades of colonial rule
Madagascar independence arrived on June 26, 1960, when the new republic’s flag rose over Antananarivo after 63 years of French rule. Philibert Tsiranana became its first president, leading a nation woven from Austronesian seafarers, Bantu settlers, and the memory of a Merina kingdom ended in 1897. It was one of 17 African nations to gain sovereignty that year.
Betsileo kingdoms take shape in Madagascar’s southern highlands
Betsileo kingdoms took shape across Madagascar’s southern highlands, with oral traditions tracing their origins to the 17th century. Communities like Fandriana and Isandra governed themselves through kinship and elder authority, carving terraced rice fields into steep hillsides that still feed the plateau today. Conquered in the 1800s, the Betsileo remain Madagascar’s third-largest ethnic group, their ancestral ceremonies intact.
Austronesian seafarers become the first settlers of Madagascar
Madagascar’s first settlers arrived sometime between 350 and 700 C.E., crossing roughly 6,000 kilometers of open Indian Ocean in outrigger canoes from what is now Indonesia. Centuries later, Bantu-speaking peoples joined them from East Africa, and the two founding populations gradually merged. The result was the Malagasy language and people — and one of humanity’s last great landmasses finally inhabited.
Vazimba queens and kings shape the first kingdoms of Madagascar’s highlands
The Vazimba built Madagascar’s first known highland kingdoms long before the Merina empire rose, with oral histories describing an era often led by queens like Rangita and Rafohy. They cleared forests, herded zebu without slaughtering them, and became the tompontany — masters of the land. Their story opens the earliest chapter of Malagasy memory.