Andry Rajoelina
Andry Rajoelina was president of Madagascar twice, from 2009 to 2014 as the head of a transitional authority the army had installed and from 2019 to October 2025 as an elected president the army removed, the disc jockey and advertising entrepreneur who was elected mayor of Antananarivo in 2007 at thirty-three, quarrelled with President Ravalomanana over a television station the government shut. He led the crowds of January 2009 in which the presidential guard shot thirty. He was handed the presidency by the army in March 2009 at thirty-four, the youngest head of state in the world. It was what the African Union and everyone else called a coup and answered with five years of suspension and sanctions in which the economy lost a third of its aid, the illegal rosewood went out and the lemurs went into the pot. He agreed not to run in the election of 2013 that ended the transition. He won that of 2018 against the man he had overthrown, and that of 2023 in a first round the opposition boycotted. The question of his French citizenship, acquired in 2014 and revealed in 2023, was unresolved by the courts that should have disqualified him. He was born in Antsirabe in 1974, the son of an army colonel, left school for a career as a DJ and an events promoter, and founded the Injet printing company and the Viva radio and television stations. He took the nickname TGV, for the train, which became his party's name. The second presidency was the pandemic, in which he promoted a herbal tonic, Covid-Organics, as a cure and sold it to African governments. There was the famine in the south in 2021 that the UN called the first caused by climate change. There were the Chinese and Emirati port and mining deals, the stadiums and the cable car over the capital, and the vanilla price collapse. There were the water and electricity cuts of September 2025 that brought the Gen Z generation into the streets, as in Nepal the same month. When the CAPSAT unit that had made him in 2009 joined the protesters on 11 October, he fled the country on a French military aircraft. He was impeached by the parliament on the 14th. Colonel Randrianirina took the presidency by the same unit's hand. He has said from abroad that he is still the president, and the courts have not agreed.
- Lived: 1974 CE – ?
- Nationality: Malagasy
- Roles: president, businessman, politician
