Countries where ASL or a derivative of ASL is the national or a widespread language include Barbados, Belize, Benin, Bolivia, Botswana ( with BSL ), Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Canada, the Central African Republic, Chad, Côte d ' Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Kenya ( minority use ), Liberia, Madagascar ( minority use ), Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Philippines ( L2 use ), Puerto Rico, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Trinidad and Tobago, Togo, and Zimbabwe ( with ZSL ).

* 1897 – Franco-Hova Wars: The town of Anosimena is captured by French troops from Menabe defenders in Madagascar.

The genus is native to Africa, and is common in the Cape Province, the mountains of tropical Africa, the islands of Africa including Madagascar, and the Arabian Peninsula.

* 1897 – The town of Ambiky is captured by France from Menabe in Madagascar.

It is also found in pegmatite in Madagascar and in Brazil.

It is located in the southern Mozambique Channel, about half-way between Madagascar ( which is to the east ) and Mozambique, and northwest of Europa Island.

Mauritania and Madagascar are the only remaining countries that do not use the decimal system ; instead, the Mauritanian ouguiya is divided into 5 khoums, while the Malagasy ariary is divided into 5 iraimbilanja.

The privately operated Comoran Navigation Company ( Société Comorienne de Navigation ) is based in Moroni, and provides services to Madagascar.

The Dodo ( Raphus cucullatus ) is an extinct flightless bird that was endemic to the island of Mauritius, east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean.

Europa Island () is a 28 km² low-lying tropical island in the Mozambique Channel, about a third of the way from southern Madagascar to southern Mozambique.

The island has been a possession of France since 1897, but is also claimed by Madagascar.

It is the only known breeding site outside Aldabra and Madagascar for Malagasy Pond Herons.

For example, on the Madagascar high central plateau, comprising approximately ten percent of that country's land area, virtually the entire landscape is sterile of vegetation, with gully erosive furrows typically in excess of 50 meters deep and one kilometer wide.

The surviving tropical population of primates, which is seen most completely in the upper Eocene and lowermost Oligocene fossil beds of the Faiyum depression southwest of Cairo, gave rise to all living species — lemurs of Madagascar, lorises of Southeast Asia, galagos or " bush babies " of Africa, and the anthropoids: platyrrhine or New World monkeys, catarrhines or Old World monkeys, and the great apes, including humans.

Mainly or partially francophone or francosphere countries include France, Belgium ( Wallonia is almost entirely francophone, and there is a large French-speaking community in the Brussels-Capital Region and a few bordering municipalities ), Canada ( the province of Quebec is francophone, and there are large French-speaking communities in Manitoba, Ontario, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and other Canadian provinces ), United States ( South / Central Louisiana and parts of Maine ), Switzerland, Haiti, the French West Indies and several countries in Africa, including Congo, Burundi, Madagascar and Rwanda, that are former French or Belgian colonies.

* 1897 – Queen Ranavalona III, the last monarch of Madagascar, is deposed by a French military force.

The island is located off the east coast of Africa, to the north of Madagascar, and boasted a high standard of living, an excellent economy, and freedom from the political and racial turmoil that characterized neighboring nations.

It is an island south of Madagascar.

The Mascarene Plateau is 2000 km long undersea plateau that lies east of Madagascar.

Lemuridae is a family of prosimian primates native to Madagascar, and one of five families commonly known as lemurs.

A tale of a massive reservation in the Uplands to hold several million Jews A tale of a plan to ship all Jews to the island of Madagascar Stories of the depravity of the guards at Globocnik's camps struck a chord of terror at the mere mention of their names.

Like all other lemurs, cheirogaleids live exclusively on the island of Madagascar.

The Comoros archipelago consists of four main islands aligned along a northwest-southeast axis at the north end of the Mozambique Channel, between Mozambique and the island of Madagascar.

The Ilois, now called Chagos Islanders or Chagossians since the late 1990s, were descended primarily from slaves brought to the island from Madagascar by the French between 1793 and 1810, and Malay slaves from the slave market on Pulo Nyas, an island off the northwest coast of Sumatra, from around 1820 until the slave trade ended following the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833.

The island hosts introduced bird species from many different regions, including Cattle Egrets ( Bubulcus ibis ), Indian Barred Ground Dove, also called the Zebra Dove ( Geopelia striata ), Turtle Dove ( Streptopleia picturata ), Indian Mynah ( Acridotheres tristis ), Madagascar Fody ( Foudia madagascariensis ), and chickens ( Gallus gallus ).

In 1895, a battalion, formed by the First and Second Foreign Regiments, was sent to the Kingdom of Madagascar, as part of an expeditionary force whose mission was to conquer the island.

Indriids, like all lemurs, live exclusively on the island of Madagascar.

Island nations within the ocean are Madagascar ( the world's fourth largest island ), Comoros, Seychelles, Maldives, Mauritius, and Sri Lanka.

Madagascar, officially the Republic of Madagascar ( ; ) and previously known as the Malagasy Republic, is an island country in the Indian Ocean, off the southeastern coast of Africa.

The nation comprises the island of Madagascar ( the fourth-largest island in the world ), as well as numerous smaller peripheral islands.

Following the prehistoric breakup of the supercontinent Gondwana, Madagascar split from India around 88 million years ago, allowing plants and animals on the island to evolve in relative isolation.

Until the late 18th century, the island of Madagascar was ruled by a fragmented assortment of shifting socio-political alliances.

Beginning in the early 19th century, most of the island was united and ruled as the Kingdom of Madagascar by a series of Merina nobles.

In the Malagasy language, the island of Madagascar is called Madagasikara and its people are referred to as Malagasy.

At, Madagascar is the world's 47th largest country and the fourth-largest island.

Madagascar later split from India about 88 million years ago, allowing plants and animals on the island to evolve in relative isolation.

This distinctive ecology has led some ecologists to refer to Madagascar as the " eighth continent ", and the island has been classified by Conservation International as a biodiversity hotspot.

Though Gondwana was still intact in the beginning of the Cretaceous, it broke up as South America, Antarctica and Australia rifted away from Africa ( though India and Madagascar remained attached to each other ); thus, the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans were newly formed.

In 1985 Madagascar, Mauritius, and Seychelles agreed to admit Comoros as the fourth member of the Indian Ocean Commission ( IOC ), an organization established in 1982 to encourage regional cooperation.

# Crozet Islands (), a group in the southern Indian Ocean, south of Madagascar ;

This allowed Indonesian peoples to cross the Indian Ocean to settle in Madagascar.

Madagascar was an important transoceanic trading hub connecting ports of the Indian Ocean in the early centuries following human settlement.

Madagascar historically has remained outside the mainstream of African affairs, although it is a member of the Indian Ocean Commission, the Organization of African Unity ( now renamed the AU ) and the Non-Aligned Movement.

The Mozambique Channel is a portion of the Indian Ocean located between the island nation of Madagascar and southeast Africa, primarily the country of Mozambique.

Réunion is an island in Southern Africa, in the Indian Ocean, east of Madagascar.

Tromelin Island (;, ) is a low, flat, island in the Indian Ocean, about east of Madagascar ( geographic coordinates: ).

V. fragrans ), grown on Madagascar, Réunion, and other tropical areas along the Indian Ocean ; V. tahitensis, grown in the South Pacific ; and V. pompona, found in the West Indies, and Central and South America.

The majority of the world's vanilla is the V. planifolia variety, more commonly known as Bourbon vanilla ( after the former name of Réunion, Île Bourbon ) or Madagascar vanilla, which is produced in Madagascar and neighboring islands in the southwestern Indian Ocean, and in Indonesia.

* Bourbon vanilla or Bourbon-Madagascar vanilla, produced from V. planifolia plants introduced from the Americas, is the term used for vanilla from Indian Ocean islands such as Madagascar, the Comoros, and Réunion, formerly the Île Bourbon.

* 1178: Chinese writer Zhou Qufei, a Guangzhou customs officer, writes of an island far west in the Indian Ocean ( possibly Madagascar ), from where people with skin " as black as lacquer " and with frizzy hair were captured and purchased as slaves by Arab merchants.

In the Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea, one of Cabral's ships discovered Madagascar ( 1501 ), which was partly explored by Tristão da Cunha ( 1507 ); Mauritius was discovered in 1507, Socotra occupied in 1506, and in the same year Lourenço de Almeida visited Ceylon.

The majority of the population of Madagascar today is a mixture of Austronesian, North Indian, Arab, Somali and Bantu settlers from Southeast Asia, Gujarat, the Arabian Peninsula, Somalia and East Africa, respectively.

Meanwhile, with competition in the new joint Chinese and South Indian naval powers, Song and Chola, the thalassocracies of Indonesia were in rapid decline, though the Portuguese still encountered Javanese sailors in Madagascar in the.

The island's West clan chiefs began to extend their power through trade with their Indian Ocean neighbors, first with Arab, Persian and Somali traders who connected Madagascar with East Africa, the Middle East and India, and later with European slave traders.

Southern Africa, island in the Indian Ocean, east of Madagascar