Madagascar 1927, the First Indigenous Automobile?

An automobile built by Victorien Razafindrabe

Razafindrabe Victorienarrives with his 2-seater automobile in Moramanga late on the evening of Sunday, February 5, 1928, so as not to attract too much attention from the crowd. Moreover, the French medical inspector who surprised him with his 4-speed contraption months earlier in his village of Antseranambe, 20 km south of Moramanga, had great difficulty convincing him to come and present his creation to the Colonial Administration in town. With much insistence, he finally succeeded. On Monday, February 6, in the afternoon, accompanied by Razaname, a writer-interpreter, the first automobile built by Razafindrabe Victorien arouses the admiration of all of Moramanga. Especially since Administrator Gougueluy, provincial chief of Moramanga, gets on board to try it out after scrutinizing and observing this marvel from the forest for 2 hours.

Victorien was a civil servant as an interpreter before becoming a self-employed logger for the past 5 years. With his family, he was forced to walk in the heat to Moramanga one fine day in 1926, lacking porters. Since then, the idea came to him to build a motorized car. And he began to materialize this dream that never left him. He had wood in abundance in this eastern region of Madagascar. He bought iron and other materials like chains in Antananarivo, then imported the engine and pneumatic tires from Paris. He crafted the transmission himself. After 11 months of hard work and testing, a two-seater automobile plies the more or less passable tracks of the Antseranambe region.

This is the very first Malagasy automobile and even the very first made by an African during the colonial period (until proven otherwise). Resourcefulness, ingenuity, patience, modesty, and humility are all human qualities of Victorien Razafindrabe. A patriot and nationalist, he would become the strongman of the 1947 insurrection, a war chief leading the uprising in the forest south of Moramanga.

Source: Ny Ranovelona(magazine of the Alumni of the Ambohijatovo Atsimo FFMA Quaker school),April 1928, pp. 52 to 54