Madagascar

Rooted in science and grown with community. This is where restored land meets healthier communities.
[what we do]
The problem, and our answer.
The Problem
Our Solution
Reforestation as Medicine
By the Numbers
Rooted in science and grown with community. In Madagascar, restored land and healthier communities grow together.

Madagascar records the world’s highest age-standardized incidence and death rates for childhood diarrheal disease and was one of three countries responsible for 58% of the global increase in malaria cases between 2023 and 2024 (Zhu et al., 2025; WHO, 2025). We work in the Mananjary and Farafangana districts in southeastern Madagascar, which carry the country’s second-highest diarrheal and highest malaria burden, respectively (Institut National de la Statistique & ICF, 2022; Malaria Atlas Project, 2024). Although precipitation is the fundamental input instigating the pathways of water-related diarrheal disease and malaria exposure, the hydrological responses to precipitation that govern the mechanisms of diarrheal pathogen transport and malaria vector habitat formation remain poorly integrated into operational health risk assessments and underutilized as intervention levers, particularly in rural Madagascar, where no prior work has examined either disease through a catchment-scale water balance investigation (Smith et al., 2013; Boithias et al., 2016; Rice et al., 2021). We a unified catchment water-balance framework to determine where water goes, where it stays, and how its spatial extent, persistence, and magnitude shape exposure conditions for both enteric pathogens and malaria.

2x
The wage we pay farmers versus the local going rate.
100%
Of coffee profits reinvested into clean water infrastructure.
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support the mission
Aerial view of standing water pooling across a deforested valley in Madagascar
[our purpose]
Fractile Institute works in Madagascar to break the cycle between poverty, deforestation, and disease.
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more about us
[the pilot land]
Reforest Degraded Landscapes. Restore Health.
1,800+ coffee and native seedlings planted across pilot hillsides beside the Manombo Special Reserve.
Sixty 5,000 litre rainwater harvesting tanks now serve three villages with clean drinking water.
Multispectral drone imagery and water pathogen testing track how the landscape and health respond.
Tree
canopy
Safe
Water