Fianarantsoa Province

Fianarantsoa Province spans Madagascar's southern highlands, the second Merina zone where terraced rice paddies climb hillsides like their northern cousins. The province's name means good learning, reflecting missionary education from the 1870s that created Madagascar's second intellectual center. Where Antananarivo Province fed the capital, Fianarantsoa fed itself and exported coffee down the narrow-gauge rail line to Manakara coast, built in 1936 as Madagascar's most scenic and least profitable railway. Dissolved in 2007, the province persisted as an economic unit: highland agriculture, coffee plantations in mid-elevation zones, and cultural identity distinct from the capital. The same rice-terrace engineering that powered Antananarivo shaped Fianarantsoa, but 400km south meant less political power and more agricultural focus. Today the former province maintains its agricultural base while watching textile manufacturing concentrate in the north. The April 2025 tariff crisis affects Fianarantsoa less directly—coffee exports continue, rice production feeds local markets—but climate change brings drought to highlands engineered for reliable rainfall. By 2026, the southern highlands test whether agricultural regions outlast manufacturing cores when both face environmental stress.