The Money Trail: A Foreigner's Guide to Bank Accounts in Madagascar

Now that Trano Mirary was official, the next order of business was to open a bank account. The only way to receive our winnings from the BYU social venture competition was to transfer them directly to an account in Madagascar. We couldn't get started without those funds.

We'd love to say that our ridiculous paperwork saga was over, but it was only the beginning. After months of signing hundreds of documents, we discovered that the bank required a notarized copy of all those same incorporation documents. To make matters worse, companies must provide copies of the owners' residency cards. Michael O'Day, the company's only foreign owner didn't have one, and residency cards are notoriously difficult to obtain.

A Resident Card in Madagascar requires a long-term VISA, which takes a significant amount of time in a third-world country. Even after the VISA is approved, a foreigner must assemble a pile of documents similar to the one we had just conquered to make Trano Mirary an official company. Michael's hands cramped at the very thought of going through that many signatures again. Even after all the documents are submitted and the application approved, the waiting process takes months, sometimes even up to a year.

We didn't have that kind of time.

Fortunately, bureaucracy worked in our favor – for once -- when we met the Prefecture of Police. After a three-year-long political crisis had cut off all foreign aid and seventy percent of the government budget, the disgruntled Prefecture of Police decided to start his own side-business expediting foreign VISAs and residency card applications. As with all such side-businesses, there was a large fee involved, but it was worth it because Michael had his Resident Card within a week.

With this last piece of the puzzle, we applied for a bank account with the Bank of Africa, which is much more efficient in processing applications. In less than an hour, we had an account and BYU was ready to transfer our funds. Then things slowed down again.

The transfer was initiated on a Friday, and Bank of Africa would normally require the entire following week to process the transfer. Not a problem, except that Monday was the 25th of June, Madagascar's Independence Day and a bank holiday. Between free concerts to celebrate the holiday, and annual protests demanding an overdue election, the banks decided to close an extra day, pushing out the date of our transfer even further. Then we discovered that all transfers must go through the country's central bank for approval, adding yet another day to the transfer process. And once it was ready we weren't able to make it to the bank until the next day.

Finally, two weeks after starting the transfer process, and six weeks after Michael O'Day arrived in Madagascar, the much needed funds were finally ready to use.

Another victory for Trano Mirary, but it's not time to celebrate yet. The next task: navigating the mortgage process.

Miles of Paper and Gallons of Ink: How Trano Mirary Became an Official Company

Trano Mirary's official certification with the government of Madagascar

 The nice thing about seeing other cultures is recognizing that for all our differences, we have so much in common. For instance, every culture has learned that good food will make any situation better, sports will unify communities and countries, and mountains of paperwork are the most basic requirement of any government service.

We discovered the last part first-hand recently. After winning BYU's social venture competition, the first step was to officially incorporate Trano Mirary as a company in Madagascar.

The legacy of the French colonial days was an antiquated and complicated system of creating businesses, so the Malagasy government tried to streamline the process with a "one-stop shop" for that very purpose. Unfortunately for us, it wasn't as simple as shopping and it certainly took more than one stop.

This one-stop shop gives aspiring business owners a stack of forms to fill out, all of which are in French with no instructions on how to complete them. Then the applicant must run all over the city to procure the needed documents.

Thus our partners found themselves traveling all over Antananarivo, desperately seeking the next item on the list, which included:

8 duplicates of bylaws
4 duplicates of each foreign partner's passport
3 duplicates of each partner's identity card
3 duplicates of each partner's Declaration of Morality
2 duplicates of each partner's original certificates of residence
2 duplicates of the Rental Agreement for Office Space
5 duplicates of the Declaration of Existence
1 copy of each partner's Declaration of Non-Criminal Activity
1 copy of each partner's Employee Identification Cards
1 copy of the partners' Declaration of Capital Contributions
1 copy of the partners' Declaration of Partners Relationship

Add in temperature and baking time and you have the world's most boring recipe.

Back in March, the Malagasy partners of Trano Mirary filled out and submitted eight duplicates of the 12-page bylaws, with each page individually signed by each partner. In the first week of April, the government informed them that even though Malagasy and English are official languages of the government, the bylaws would need to be resubmitted in French. To complicate matters, all the dates on our documents needed to match, meaning that we had to completely redo all the paperwork on our list as well.  

With a great deal of patience and plenty of hard work, our partners were able to re-sign and resubmit all the necessary documents by the end of April. Then came the next bombshell: Executive Director Michael O'Day's signature was faxed, not original, which meant it was all invalid. They would have to wait two weeks to have Michael sign all 96 pages in person. Again.

Patience is more than a virtue; it's a business strategy, and it paid off for us in the end. After four months of chasing government officials and signing our names until our fingers were blue, Trano Mirary's application was finally, officially, valid. Just two weeks later we received our official documentation of incorporation in Madagascar. It's official, at long last!

Now back to the original plan: Build some houses for those in need!

More proof that Trano Mirary exists