Africa trains hundreds of thousands of doctoral researchers and gives them almost no shared route to money. PhiDoc, a Moroccan startup, went live in September with a platform for the funding, mentorship and peer networks that are scattered across the continent.
Oussama Elasri founded the company this year with two co-founders. The platform tracks thesis progress, surfaces funding calls and conferences filtered by discipline and career stage, and runs a directory researchers can use to find collaborators. A research assistant covers methodology questions and introduces candidates to mentors.
It began with a deadline he missed
During his own PhD at Cadi Ayyad University in Marrakech, Elasri found an Erasmus+ opportunity one day after applications closed. He started a spreadsheet of calls and conferences, colleagues passed it around, and inside weeks dozens of researchers were relying on it.
His description of the problem is plain. Information travels through WhatsApp groups and forwarded email, so some researchers hear about opportunities months after the deadline or never at all.
Designed around the infrastructure that exists
The service runs in English, French and Arabic. It works on low bandwidth, keeps functioning offline and opens on basic mobile phones. Roughly 1,500 researchers now form its community, and universities and doctoral centres can purchase institutional access for their candidates.
Revenue flows from institutional subscriptions, premium individual features and a diaspora programme in which mentors and partners sponsor access for researchers who cannot afford it.
The founders have bootstrapped the business so far and are in early talks with impact investors and development finance institutions. Francophone Africa and MENA come next, with East and Southern Africa after.
The infrastructure gap, as Elasri frames it, is African and regional rather than Moroccan.
