---
type: Place
title: Antananarivo
description: Madagascar's capital, "the city of a thousand soldiers" — French cathedrals on hills, a market selling every part of the zebu, and settlements where a shipping container is one of the better homes.
tags: [antananarivo, madagascar, markets, poverty, french-colonial, food, street-life]
coordinates: {lat: -18.9100, lng: 47.5256}
timestamp: 2026-08-05T12:00:00Z
---

# Antananarivo

The capital of [Madagascar](/countries/madagascar.md), called Tana by everyone
who lives there, with about 1.5 million people. The name means *city of a
thousand soldiers* — the first king defended the site with a thousand of them.

Harry covers it across two videos, and changes his mind between them. The first
day he walks it alone, from a cathedral on the hill down through the city into
the main market, and argues for going without a guide: no interpreter means he
misses things, and he'd rather have unmediated encounters than a curated day.
The second day he hires one and concedes the point on camera. Malagasy and
French are the languages, English barely exists, and the first day runs entirely
on Google Translate and gestures.

His first impression is that it's a beautiful city with the French colonial
architecture and the hills around it — and that there is a darker side he hasn't
reached yet.

## Poverty

The thing the page has to say plainly, because Harry does.

- **75% of the population lives on $1–2 a day.** He repeats it standing beside
  men who have worked twelve hours for it.
- **The begging is at a scale he has not met in any other African or developing
  country.** One child he meets doesn't want money, only food.
- **Giving to one person produces a crowd within seconds**, and he has to leave.
  He handles it the same way he does in [Lagos](/places/lagos.md): give a little,
  explain, keep moving.
- **People come to Tana from all over the country**, from many different tribes,
  expecting opportunity — and some get stuck here with no family and no
  community.
- He rates the standard of living below the other developing countries he has
  filmed, and says the gap between that and the island's natural wealth is what
  makes it hard to watch.

## The market

The main market, and not what he expected: a new road, clean, calm, and
noticeably better kept than markets he's filmed elsewhere in Africa — possibly,
he thinks, because tourists come here. Deeper in it becomes the vibrant, chaotic
version he was looking for.

- **It sells everything**, from fruit to phones — the old Nokia bricks alongside
  Huawei and Oppo, and no iPhones.
- **Public urinals inside the market**, male and female, which he singles out as
  genuinely rare.
- **Street manicures and pedicures**, done in the open, with groups of fifty
  people waiting. Haircuts too.

Prices, in ariary:

- **Koba**, the peanut-and-rice cake, where he paid 10,000 for a slice — the
  seller never named a price and Harry offered that one himself. The going rate,
  in the koba market a week later, is 1,000. He rates it eight out of ten and
  says it tastes like cake.
- **Fried banana**, 500.
- **A full meal, 600**, which he calls insane.
- **Coffee, 500.**
- **A Madagascar football shirt**: 40,000 for the poor-quality version, 150,000
  for the good one. He bought the good one for about $20.
- **A fake Essentials shirt, 55,000**, plus 5,000 for the carrier bag.
- **A shoe seller's daily earnings**, around 50,000 (from video – unverified —
  the figure is confused in translation).

**He declines to haggle**, and says why: the seller has already told him life is
difficult, he used to bargain hard, and he's realised he doesn't need to. He
takes the same view of an expensive painting — that it's a tourist price and
that art doesn't really have one.

## Getting around

- **The taxi-be** is the city's lifeline — a local minibus carrying twenty or
  thirty people, boarded while it's still moving, with a conductor collecting
  fares and keeping people right. **Routes are colour-coded** rather than
  written, because not everyone can read.
- **Roads are the bottleneck.** Greater Tana is around 4 million people against
  1.5 million in the city proper, on narrow roads with houses built right up
  against them, and there is nowhere to widen them.
- **Travelling beyond the capital is genuinely hard**: domestic flights are
  expensive and unreliable, the roads are bad and the journeys long, and Harry's
  guide's view is that the government doesn't invest in fixing them — which he
  contrasts with South Asia, where road-building drove development.

## The informal settlements

A long, thin strip of housing between a canal and a wall, and the part of the
city Harry goes back for in the second video.

- **A family of six live in a shipping container** — two bunk beds, a stove, a
  cat — and it is one of the *better* homes in the area.
- **Average earnings here are under $1 a day**, and some people earn nothing at
  all and work the rubbish dump instead, selling or using whatever they find.
- **Water costs 2,000 ariary a bucket**, which locals describe as expensive.
- **Laundry is 100 ariary a shirt**, done by hand.
- **The economy is salvage**: scrap metal and computers stripped into carefully
  sorted parts for a few cents each, iPhone screens at 500, a tin beaten into a
  money box.
- **Recycled medical supplies are sold**, including used Covid vaccination
  equipment — which Harry is warned is sometimes refilled with rat poison or
  insecticide.
- **Government help exists and is very small**, and his guide says much of it
  leaks before it arrives.

Harry gives the container family money, and says on camera that he'd rather have
bought them things because you never know how money gets spent — and that they
asked for money, so that's what he gave. He doesn't pretend to have resolved it.

**Clearance is ongoing.** A new metro line displaced everyone on the far side of
the canal, and when President Macron visited, people were moved off the roads so
the city would look better. Harry's phrase for it is covering over the cracks.

## The markets, second visit

- **Zebu** is an endemic breed of cattle and his guide claims the meat is among
  the best in the world. The whole animal is sold — brain, tail — and the best
  part, he's told, is the liver.
- **Pork sausage made by hand** on the spot, and eaten at a stall beside where
  it's made.
- **Halal and pork counters** sit alongside each other.
- **Koba**, in its own market. Rice flour and peanuts steamed in a banana leaf,
  cut into slices at 1,000 each — around 20 cents, at 4,000 ariary to the dollar.
  **It is a licensed product**: it's made in a village an hour outside the city,
  you need a licence to produce it, and unlicensed sellers hide from the police.
- **A street coffee seller** working out of a large insulated kettle with a
  home-made filter: 300 for a half glass, 600 for a full. He sells around 34
  litres a day and clears about 30,000 ariary in profit — and charged Harry 500
  against his guide's 300, which Harry notices and rates. Harry left him 20,000,
  roughly a day's profit, and bought coffees for everyone standing around.
- **French pastry survives**: baguettes, madeleines, and chocolate crêpes for
  about 10 cents.

## Language and status

Malagasy is the language; French is the colonial inheritance and, Harry is told,
what wealthier Malagasy speak to signal status. He says he prefers Malagasy.

## Around the city

- **The Church of the Immaculate Conception** at the top of the hill, in the
  Andohalo area, and a long walk down into the city from it.
- **French colonial architecture** throughout — shuttered buildings, cathedrals,
  and old Citroëns still running.
- **The national football stadium** was built by China, and Harry says it isn't
  FIFA-recognised on safety grounds.
- **Shared taxis** run across the city, filled to capacity, for a few pence.
- **French food is still on the menu** — boeuf bourguignon — alongside **zebu**,
  the local beef, which is the thing to order.

## Safety

Harry's assessment: opportunistic crime driven by poverty, as in any developing
city, rather than anything that reaches the headlines. Warned early on by a
local to watch his camera because there are people with knives, he notes he has
been told the same thing in every city he's been to, London and Paris included.

He then walks back across the city at night, on 4% battery, past a large group
of young men, and arrives fine — narrating his own nervousness on the way rather
than pretending to have none.

## Harry's tips

- **Get a data eSIM before you need it.** Without an interpreter the entire day
  runs on a translate app.
- **Go deeper into the market than the clean part.** The front is tidied for
  visitors; the interior is the real thing.
- **Eat zebu.**
- **Don't grind the price down.** His own stated position here, from a seller who
  had just told him life was hard.
- **Hire the guide after all.** He walked the first day without one and argued
  for it; on the second day, with one, he says on camera that he doesn't usually
  like guides and that this one took him to places he would never have found —
  see [travel with a local guide](/tips/travel-with-a-local-guide.md). Both
  positions are his, a week apart, and the second is the one he concedes.
- **Take the taxi-be.** Colour-coded, constant, and how the whole city moves.
- **Buy koba from a licensed seller**, and eat it fresh.

## Source

- [The Country Everyone Knows But Nobody Visits 🇲🇬](/videos/zDUHfkqNgg8.md) —
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDUHfkqNgg8
- [Inside Madagascar - The Poorest Island Nation in the World 🇲🇬](/videos/D3zb3zleZds.md) —
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3zb3zleZds