by the Safari Dispatch team
Career advice

Working at a Madagascar lodge: the two-step visa and labour permit

You need a labour inspector's contract visa, a Ministry of Labour work permit and a transformable embassy visa, and we found no official fee list.

SafariCareers · Updated 17 October 2026

To work at a lodge in Madagascar you need two things: a work permit that your employer requests from the Ministry of Labour, with your contract stamped by a labour inspector first, and a long-stay visa that starts as a one-month transformable visa from a Malagasy embassy abroad. The 2024 Labour Code that sets this up does not include a quota or a test for available Malagasy workers, and the official permit fees have not been published anywhere we could verify. In national parks, visitors must be accompanied by a local guide licensed by Madagascar National Parks, and we found no official route for a foreigner into that role.

A stamped contract and a ministerial work permit

Article 61 of the Labour Code, Law 2024-014, says an immigrant worker needs two authorisations. The first is a prior visa on the employment contract from the labour inspector. The second is a work permit issued by the Minister of Labour, or by the Director General of Labour and Social Laws under delegation. The permit must state at least your identity, nationality, position, job category, validity and place of work. The Code leaves the procedure, withdrawal and fees to regulations, and we could not find those regulations published.

The visa starts at an embassy

The immigration side runs in two steps. You apply at a Malagasy embassy for a one-month visa that is extendable and transformable into a long-term visa. The Embassy of Madagascar in London lists work, volunteering and missions among the purposes for this route. Within one month of arriving, you convert it at the Immigration and Emigration Service of the Ministry of the Interior into a long-stay visa and a resident card.

The London embassy’s January 2026 notice asks for your original passport, a police certificate less than six months old, a ticket or itinerary, and an invitation or proof of where you will live. It processes applications in three to seven working days once it has the full hardcopy file.

What the employer has to show is not spelled out

The Labour Code text we read sets no quota for foreign staff, no requirement to prove that no Malagasy candidate is available and no duty to train a local replacement. Ask the employer what its file to the Ministry of Labour has to contain, and whether it has been asked to justify hiring a foreigner.

No official fee schedule we could verify

We found no official, current fee list for the work permit, the contract visa or the long-stay visa. The only figures we found come from a relocation firm and predate the 2024 Code.

Item Fee Timing
Employment authorisation, paid at the EDBM front office EUR 100 (per MDG Services, 2022) About one month (per MDG Services)
Foreigners’ registration certificate, Prefecture of Police Ar 20,000 (per MDG Services, 2022) Collected after three days (per MDG Services)
Transformable visa, London embassy Not published in a legible form 3 to 7 working days (official)

Treat the relocation firm’s figures as a guide to the steps, not as current prices.

Permit length depends on the visa and the contract

MDG Services says a first worker visa is generally valid for one to two years and should be renewed three months before it expires. Separately, the Labour Code limits any fixed-term contract to two years, renewable twice, with a six-year ceiling in total. We could not confirm whether that contract ceiling also caps how long a foreigner can hold a work permit.

Park guiding goes to licensed local guides

According to Madamagazine, a visit with a local forest guide is required in national parks across Madagascar, with Lokobe on Nosy Be as the exception. Those guides complete two years of training and are licensed by Madagascar National Parks. In 2024 the Ministry of Tourism counted about 1,350 guides registered and authorised to work, and said it was drafting a decree to build the skills of Malagasy guides. That decree was a proposal, and we could not confirm that it has been adopted. We found no official rule on whether a foreigner can obtain a guide licence. For how guiding qualifications are graded elsewhere, see our FGASA levels explainer.

Volunteers use the same long-stay route

The London embassy lists volunteering alongside work under the transformable visa, so a volunteer placement is not done on a tourist visa. The embassy notice has a separate section for volunteers, but its document list was not legible in the version we read, and we could not confirm whether volunteers also need a Ministry of Labour work permit. Ask the organisation before you book. Current placements are in our volunteering listings.

A new Labour Code in 2024, a tourist visa rise in 2026

Law 2024-014 was adopted by the National Assembly on 20 June 2024 and the Senate on 1 July 2024, cleared by the High Constitutional Court on 8 August 2024 and then promulgated. It repealed the 2003 Labour Code. The regulations it calls for on work permit fees and procedures had not appeared in anything we could find by October 2026. On 16 February 2026 the 15-day tourist e-visa rose from EUR 10 to EUR 30. That change applies only to tourists.

Get the employer’s numbers in writing

Because the official fees are not published, ask the lodge early who files with the Ministry of Labour and who pays. Apply for the transformable visa before you travel, and do not start work, paid or unpaid, until the work permit and long-stay visa are approved. Malagasy candidates need neither approval, which puts them first in line for most lodge jobs. See current openings on our jobs in Madagascar page.

This is a plain-language summary of the rules as they stood in October 2026, not legal advice. Rules and fees change, so check the official sources below or ask the employer before you apply.

Sources

We check facts against the organisations’ own pages and the job ads we link to. Rules, fees and pay change, so check the source before you rely on a figure. Spotted something out of date? Email editor@safaridispatch.com.