Times are tough but Madagascar’s markets are bustling. The dusty, overcrowded slums of Antananarivo are packed with men in straw hats laying claim to a patch of dirt for the day’s hard sell. Women sit under the shade of rows of brightly coloured umbrellas, beside neat pyramids of vegetables or wicker baskets stuffed with clucking chickens.

The sweet scent of fresh mangoes and the sound of upbeat Malagasy folk music fill the air. Beneath the bustle, the huge Indian Ocean island has suffered an inflationary crisis with prices of basic foods surging 24 percent in the year to last October, driving the impoverished 17 million population – the majority of whom live on less than a dollar a day – deeper into poverty.

Analysts say the price increases were driven by increasing world oil prices and the depreciation of the Malagasy franc last year with import demand surging after duty was exempted on more than 200 imports.

Last November, the price of a loaf of bread shot up 50 percent, and the cost of meat, cooking oil and sugar increased 20 percent. But for the majority of the population, it is the cost of rice – the main staple food on the island – that has caused the most pain, surging by 200 percent last year.

Madagascar consumes almost 2.5 million tonnes of rice annually, but prices shot up last year when crops were hit by two consecutive cyclones which ripped through the giant island off the coast of East Africa in January and March. Although foods like potatoes are cheaper than rice, Madagascans say substituting is not an option. “We can’t just eat something else,” says 49-year-old cleaner Jeanine Rasoazananay. “Rice is the food that our ancestors ate. That means it is sacred.”

Madagascans say strong cultural ties to rice through the ancient cult of ancestor worship make it hard for people in this conservative island nation to change their diet, even in the face of hunger. Reverence for dead ancestors and how they lived is a key part of the island’s traditional religious life. “If we don’t eat the ancestors’ food, we somehow don’t feel right,” adds Rasoazananay. “People would rather buy less rice and go hungry than eat something else.”

Anger over rising rice prices manifested itself in protests amongst the island’s most disaffected with poverty-stricken mothers, army reservists and university students taking to the streets of the capital last June. In an effort to prevent further unrest, the authorities appealed to rice-growing nations for aid to flood the market and bring prices down. But traders say the strategy has had limited success.

“The government says they imported 100,000 tonnes of cheap rice from Thailand, but I’ve only seen this rice once and it was never enough to stop the shortage,” says Saina Randriananajato, who owns a rice stall in Antananarivo’s Isotry slum.

Prime Minister Jacques Sylla says efforts to make rice cheaper are being hampered by speculators stockpiling rice while they wait for further hikes. Analysts predict Madagascar’s inflationary crisis should ease as pressure on the ariary currency, which replaced the Malagasy franc at the start of the year, subsides and oil prices cool down.