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Axian Group, the Madagascar conglomerate run by tycoon Hassanein Hiridjee, is funding a 100-bed residence for female students at Akamasoa, the community that Catholic priest Pedro Opeka built for families living off a garbage dump on the edge of Antananarivo.
The three-story building is being paid for by the Axian Foundation, the group's charity, together with its mobile operator Yas Madagascar and its property company First Immo. It sits next to the university Opeka runs on the Akamasoa hill and will house about 100 women aged 18 to 35. Opeka and Axian executives laid the first stones on June 5 last year, and contractors Sequoia JR and Sototec were given about a year to finish the building in time for the 2026 academic year.
"They need a residence so they can live with dignity and so they are protected," Opeka said at the ceremony.
The Akamasoa university teaches about 1,250 students from 23 of Madagascar's regions, in courses that include teaching, French, English, computing and paramedical studies.
"Giving young women an environment that encourages learning, confidence and personal growth is essential," said Mialisoa Andrianasolo, executive director of the Axian Foundation. "It is a strong act in favor of equal opportunity."
A long partnership
The residence is the latest project in a partnership between Axian and Akamasoa that goes back to 2022. Under a program called Tafontsika, the Axian Foundation has built about 50 homes for Akamasoa families who had been living in unsafe shacks, handing over the keys in batches.
Opeka, an Argentine-born priest of the Congregation of the Mission, founded Akamasoa in 1989 after meeting families scavenging on the Antananarivo dump. The movement has since built homes, schools, clinics and workshops for tens of thousands of people. Pope Francis visited Akamasoa in September 2019.
The foundation has also funded other housing for young people at risk. In January last year it opened a home for 12 teenage girls in Itaosy, on the grounds of the charity Les Enfants du Soleil.
"This project marks a new stage in the Axian Foundation's commitment to vulnerable children," Hiridjee said at that opening.
Hiridjee's group
Hiridjee, 51, runs Axian, a family business his uncles founded as Hirimix and renamed in 2015. The group now spans telecommunications, energy, real estate and financial services across Madagascar and other parts of Africa and the Indian Ocean.
Its biggest unit is its telecoms arm, now called Yas Group, which operates mobile and mobile-money businesses in Madagascar, Tanzania, the Comoros, Togo and Senegal and owns the Kenyan broadband and pay-TV company Wananchi Group. The telecoms business reported revenue of $1.69 billion for 2025, up 20.2% from a year earlier, and adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization of $728.4 million.
Madagascar remains its home base and accounts for about 35% of the telecoms unit's earnings.
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