PhiDoc, a Moroccan EdTech startup, plans to launch a digital platform on September 16 to help doctoral and early-career researchers access funding opportunities, academic networks, mentorship, and research support in one place.
In a press release, the startup said that the platform will initially focus on Morocco before expanding to the wider African continent and the MENA region after its first year of operation in the kingdom.
It noted that the platform was created to address an information gap that contributes to doctoral researchers abandoning their theses before defending them, citing several studies, including one by the former higher education ministry, which put the dropout rate at 90%.
The startup noted unfunded theses, supervisors managing dozens of candidates, limited access to international databases, and prolonged periods of isolation among the structural challenges facing doctoral researchers.
It also identified access to information about grants, funding, and conference opportunities as another challenge, noting that such information often circulates “through supervisors, mailing lists, and WhatsApp groups, sometimes unevenly or too late.”
“What Moroccan researchers produce is not the problem. The infrastructure around that work is,” says Oussama Elasri, founder of PhiDoc, who created the platform after discovering an Erasmus+ opportunity one day after its deadline in 2025.
The platform is set to allow researchers to track their thesis progress, access funding and conference opportunities based on their discipline and career stage, and consult a Moroccan researchers in Morocco and abroad who could become collaborators.
It will also offer support on research methodology and writing, while researchers conducting quantitative or qualitative surveys can find participants within the platform’s community.
The program is set to connect doctoral researchers with professors, particularly those from Morocco’s scientific diaspora, with PhiDoc emphasizing that researchers can request to be matched with a mentor, with sessions tracked on the platform.
The platform is available from today at phidoc.org in French and English on both iOS and Android and is open to doctoral researchers, early-career researchers, and professors.
It also offers institutional access to doctoral schools, research laboratories, and partner universities.
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