Malagasy billionaire Hassanein Hiridjee just lost a 27-year fuel import arrangement to the state

Madagascar has taken fuel importing away from four private distributors, one of them owned by Hassanein Hiridjee, one of the country's wealthiest men.

Jovena is the fuel arm of Axian, the conglomerate run by the Malagasy billionaire Hassanein Hiridjee. It is one of four brands that made up the Groupement Pétrolier de Madagascar, or GPM, an industry grouping rather than a company, which has coordinated every fuel import tender into the country since the sector was liberalised in 1999. The others are TotalEnergies, Vivo Energy, which is Vitol's local operation, and Galana, owned by Rubis Énergie.

The National Assembly ended that arrangement on July 1 with Law No. 021/2026, and the Constitutional Court upheld it on Aug. 3. Importing fuel for JIRAMA, the state water and electricity utility, now falls to State Procurement of Madagascar, a government purchasing agency created in 2019.

The first cargo under the new system arrived on Aug. 12, and it did not come through any GPM member. The tanker Sunda 1 delivered 67 million litres of diesel at Toamasina, negotiated with the Nigerian group Sahara, enough to cover roughly six months of JIRAMA's requirements.

Getting it ashore meant taking a competitor's tanks. Madagascar has one oil storage facility, the Galana tank farm at Toamasina, owned by Rubis. The government requisitioned it. GPM's own tanker, the Danish-flagged Torm Eva carrying about 71,000 tonnes of diesel, gasoline and kerosene, was left waiting offshore. In a note to customers on Aug. 11, the group said the order made it impossible to unload the vessel chartered under its supply programme.

The market being reorganised is small but not trivial. Madagascar consumed 285,518 cubic metres of petroleum products in the first quarter of 2026, of which 169,271 cubic metres was diesel, according to the national statistics institute. Annual consumption runs to about a million tonnes.

Axian entered the business in 2004, taking a stake in Jovena the same year the Hiridjee family bought control of the newly privatised Télécom Malagasy, the acquisition that became the foundation of the group. The family arrived in Madagascar from India in 1866 and built a textile business called Hirimix in the 1950s, diversifying from 1995 into power generation through Électricité de Madagascar.

Axian now operates in 32 countries and territories across real estate, telecoms, finance, energy and innovation. Its 2022 revenue was $1.9 billion, making it the largest company in Madagascar by turnover. Hiridjee, 51, was born in Antananarivo, took his baccalaureate at the French lycée there in 1992 and graduated from ESCP Business School in Paris. He holds French and Malagasy nationality and runs the group with his brother Amin.

Selling fuel to the Malagasy state has been difficult for years. Jovena signed an agreement with the finance and energy ministers in July 2019 covering repayment of money the government owed it, after years in which the state bought fuel on credit to run JIRAMA without settling the bills. Galana filed its own claim afterwards seeking the same treatment.

The distributors have raised a specific objection to what replaces them. In a position seen by Bloomberg, GPM members warned that the new state entity could source petroleum products from suppliers under international sanctions, creating legal and commercial risk for distributors, logistics providers and customers using that fuel. Madagascar has strengthened its ties with Russia since last year's military coup. Prime Minister Mamitiana Rajaonarison has said the government is considering developing oil storage infrastructure with Russian support, and President Michaël Randrianirina has deepened diplomatic and security cooperation with Moscow.

What the law does not settle is how the two systems coexist. It created a state importer without specifying the terms on which it operates alongside private distributors, and its initial scope covers only JIRAMA's fuel. Jovena and the other three brands still supply the commercial market, still own the retail networks, and still depend on the same port and the same storage facility the state has now requisitioned once.