The status of gambling in Madagascar

Gambling is legal in Madagascar, all various forms of gambling activities, from casinos games to sports betting and lottery are permitted in the country.

Madagascar officially named the Republic of Madagascar; the island country located in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of East Africa. Madagascar had been a part of the French Colonial Empire from 1897 until it gained its independence in 1960. Today French remains an official language in the country along with the local language, Malagasy. The country’s population of over 26 million people, the capital city is Antananarivo and some of the largest city, Toamasina, Antsirabe, Franarantsoa, Mahajanga and Toliara.

Online casinos gambling in Madagascar

Online casino gambling is not explicitly regulated at the moment by country’s gambling laws. The current gambling laws were passed before online casino gambling gained its current popularity; therefore, the legislators had not deemed it necessary to specify what regulations apply to the online version of casino games. However, recently the Ministry of the Interior and Decentralization, the body supervising casino gambling in Madagascar proposed to revise and actualize the Malagasy casino gambling regulations. They declare that the current gambling law no longer fulfils its purpose, as the context of casino gambling has changed significantly since the time of its legislation. The new version of the proposed online gambling regulation is intended to cover both online casinos as well as online sports betting and other gambling activities in the country.

However, it has not yet explicitly stated whether online casinos would be legal in the future as it just a proposal from the body in charge of casinos gambling in the country. In contrast land-based casinos is currently legalized, one can safely speculate that online casinos will require licensing in the foreseeable future for interested operators, rather than being prohibited. On the other hand, there are also no regulations in place that prevent locals from playing on international online casino sites. Therefore there are currently four land-based casinos in Madagascar, all of which are part of the resort, all which located in the capital city. The largest casino in Madagascar is the Colbert Hotel and Casino, with over 250 slot machines as well as table games such as blackjack, Roulette and Texas Hold’em Poker.

Online Sports Betting

Sports betting is a pretty common form of gambling around the globe, especially in Africa, betting on sports appears to be legal in Madagascar. However, the most popular type of sports betting in the country is horse racing, this horse racing is an annual horse racing tracing back to the French colonial days. However, online sports betting not yet regulated in the country. Therefore a lot of foreign betting site as target the players from Madagascar.

What could change?

At the moment, most forms of online gambling are just as unregulated as online casino gambling and online sports betting in Madagascar. Gaming, in general, is allowed, but the current gambling law does not explicitly regulate the online version of the games. As stated above, there are plans to review and update the gambling law, with the stated purpose of covering online gambling as well. But at the moment there appears to be no online gambling operator based in Madagascar, nor is there a clear way for them to obtain a gambling license. Still, in 2011 the country as shown signs of being open to a legal and regulated online betting scene an agreement was signed with GTECH to make tickets to the Malagasy lottery available online.

In Conclusion

Hopefully, the Covid-19 pandemic that has put the country in the spotlight recently, claiming to find a cure for the covid-19 epidemic, the outbreak that has struck the global economy. Still, we have seen a sign that the leaders from the African region as shown commitment and clear intentions to embrace a digital economy. I firmly believed, in the foreseeable future, online gambling could be legalized in Madagascar.

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