Southern Madagascar, polycrisis and project failures: A scoping review

Abstract

The southern region of Madagascar experiences a series of crises related to agro-climatic, nutritional, security, institutional, and political conditions despite the presence of numerous development aid projects over several decades. To understand this apparent paradox, this scoping review examines 63 peer-reviewed and grey literature studies in both French and English from 1990 to 2023, focusing on project failures in the southern region of Madagascar. The article makes two main contributions. Firstly, in terms of methodology, it presents an original approach to conduct a scoping review in a geographical area characterized by the presence of numerous development players and a low number of scientific articles. Secondly, it represents the very first article to offer a synthesis of the literature analyzing development failures in southern Madagascar. It thus appears that the equilibrium of maldevelopment in southern Madagascar is rooted in the systemic interaction between agri-environmental tensions, the failures of the state and aid, and the inadequate consideration of socio-anthropological dimensions and gender relations.