The 2005 animated film “Madagascar” depicts the Southeastern African island as an untouched jungle paradise. As the New York animals navigate the unfamiliar wild, they encounter almost everything except the extreme poverty in Madagascar.

Poverty in Madagascar

Madagascar, an African island praised for its biodiversity and remarkably distinct natural landscape, is one of the poorest countries in the world. The World Bank reported that 80% of the country’s population lives below the international extreme poverty line ($2.15 per day) as of 2024. One of the most jarring manifestations of this poverty in Madagascar is the Andralanitra dumpsite.

Andralanitra is a dumpsite located just outside of Antananarivo, the country’s capital. It has been operational since the 1960s and receives more than 600 tons of trash each day. The 50 acres of gray waste are visible in satellite imagery. For years, the Malagasy government did not provide a population count for Andralanitra, saying no one inhabited the dumpsite. In 2015, however, Riccardo Bononi confirmed the existence of 3,000 people living and working at the dumpsite, a finding that inspired social change within the Madagascan government.

Riccardo Bononi’s Work in Andralanitra

Riccardo Bononi is a visual anthropologist from Padua, Italy. He traveled to Madagascar in 2006 as a field researcher and journalist, initially intending to focus on the plague, which remains present on the island today. Locals informed him of an area with the highest number of cases of the disease in the entire country: Andralanitra.

Upon arriving at the dumpsite, Bononi was struck not by the prevalence of disease but by the dire circumstances in which residents lived. He spent four years learning about and documenting the lives of the people of Andralanitra. His photographs and interviews became the photo essay and documentary “City of Flies.”

“City of Flies” was one of the first published works to document the demographics and living conditions of Andralanitra’s residents, giving visibility to some of the most extreme cases of poverty in Madagascar. Most residents are orphans; even adults living at the site were abandoned there as infants by mothers who could not afford to keep them. Residents make a living by sorting through waste to recover metals and plastics that can be sold in town.

A small collection of Bononi’s photos was first published in VICE magazine in 2016. Two years later, Irfoss published Bononi’s complete photobook, “Une Belle Vie, Une Belle Mort” (“A Beautiful Life, a Beautiful Death”). The combination of a photo essay, documentary and photobook drew international attention and became an example of how journalism can inspire social change.

How “City of Flies” Inspired Social Change

In June 2026, Bononi spoke as a guest lecturer for Boston University’s Conflict & Crisis Reporting summer class in Padua, Italy. Speaking to a group of 10 journalism students, Bononi described his work in Andralanitra as his greatest success, saying its value lay not in money or awards but in the change it brought about in Madagascar.

According to Bononi, his documentary’s proof of 3,000 people living in the dumpsite forced the Madagascan government to acknowledge that the site was inhabited, and that the community was made up largely of children. His work also motivated local and international groups to pressure the government to address the humanitarian conditions in which people were working, living and sleeping among waste.

The most significant change, Bononi said, came when he returned to the dumpsite years after his work was published and found it had no residents. The Madagascan government had reintegrated the community, providing residents with jobs within the country’s broader society.

Looking Ahead

Poverty in Madagascar as a whole remains far from resolved, and numerous nonprofit organizations continue working to address the country’s economic and environmental hardships. Still, Bononi’s “City of Flies” illustrates the impact that can come from documenting injustice and giving voice to communities that are otherwise overlooked.

– Mia Puleo

Mia is based in Park City, UT, USA and focuses on Good News for The Borgen Project.

Photo: Flickr