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Madagascar elections: Lalao Ravalomanana looking to become Africa’s 3rd female leader
However FDI slumped 30 percent to US$860 million in 2010 and remained below pre-crisis levels in 2011.
Pressed on her economic experience, Lalao said she had run the family’s sprawling business empire until she and her husband fled the country. “When you know how to work with the people, to share with them the fruits of growth, I know that there will be justice in this country,” she said
That may grate with the family’s opponents, who accuse Marc Ravalomanana of using his presidency to further his private interests and become one of the wealthiest of Madagascar’s 20 million people.
Ravalomanana built up his fortune in a rags-to-riches-tale, selling yoghurt off the back of a bicycle in the capital Antananarivo in his early 20s before he secured a World Bank loan to set up his own factory.
