Part 1 of a three-part series on strengthening research and higher education in Madagascar – by Sarobidy Rakotonarivo
Madagascar is right to strengthen the scientific and ethical standards associated with the Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches (HDR). But when access to that assessment depends first on administrative status, the system risks excluding researchers who already have the experience to lead research, build teams and train the next generation. This weakens the quality and capacity of Malagasy research and doctoral training.
A personal ambition that raised a wider question
Earlier this year, I began exploring the possibility of undertaking an Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches, or HDR, at the École Doctorale Gestion des Ressources Naturelles et Développement at the University of Antananarivo. My objective was not simply to add another qualification to my curriculum vitae. I hoped to become formally eligible to take full responsibility for research programmes and, where appropriate, to serve as the principal director of doctoral researchers enrolled in the same doctoral school.
Since returning to Madagascar in 2020, after postgraduate training and research positions overseas, I have remained closely affiliated with ESSA-Forêts, my alma mater at the University of Antananarivo. I founded Mitsilo, a research laboratory working at the intersection of conservation, development and public policy. Through Mitsilo and our university partnerships, I lead multidisciplinary teams, coordinate internationally funded projects, mentor young researchers and contribute to the supervision and evaluation of Master’s and doctoral work.
I assumed that the central question would be whether my scientific record, research leadership and supervision experience met the standards expected for an HDR. Instead, I learned that my dossier could not be considered unless I first belonged to the public corps of Maîtres de conférences or Maîtres de recherches and had spent at least three years in that grade.
My first reaction was personal disappointment. But the issue is much larger than my own career. When capable researchers are excluded from formal research leadership, Madagascar loses supervision capacity, institutional memory and opportunities to train the next generation of scholars.
This is not an argument for automatic recognition
Let me be clear about what I am not arguing. An HDR should not be awarded automatically because someone has studied abroad, published extensively, secured international grants or developed a strong professional reputation. Directing research is a serious academic responsibility. It requires scientific maturity, integrity, intellectual independence and the ability to support younger researchers over time.
The distinction is between entitlement and eligibility. No researcher should be entitled to an HDR without rigorous assessment. But researchers who can demonstrate substantial scientific experience should, in principle, have a route through which that experience can be evaluated.
This matters not only for people in my position. It may also affect grant-funded researchers based in public universities, members of university-affiliated laboratories without permanent appointments, returning Malagasy scholars, experienced co-supervisors and diaspora researchers who wish to contribute more formally to research leadership and doctoral training.
This is not an argument for automatic recognition
The new HDR framework responds to genuine concerns in the Malagasy research system. Its stated objectives include strengthening scientific quality, ethics, transparency and the governance of doctoral training. These are welcome and necessary ambitions.
The scientific requirements are substantial. The text specifies a minimum publication record, including principal-author contributions and articles in internationally recognized indexed journals. It also requires a synthesis demonstrating coherence across the candidate’s work, the capacity to define an original research programme, experience supervising younger researchers and the ability to animate a research team.
It also excludes predatory publications, work without credible peer review, redundant publications and work outside the candidate’s field. Specialist commissions, internal and external reviewers, and a formal jury are intended to ensure that quality is not assessed by counting publications alone.
Madagascar should insist on these standards. The question is not whether the HDR should be demanding. It should. The question is whether administrative rank should determine who is permitted to demonstrate that rigour.
Scientific capacity is not the same as administrative status
The current rule combines three dimensions that are related but not identical: scientific capacity, institutional responsibility and administrative status. Scientific capacity concerns whether a researcher can develop an original programme of work, publish rigorously, lead teams, obtain funding, mentor younger scholars and uphold scientific integrity. Institutional responsibility concerns whether the researcher is attached to a recognized institution, subject to its rules and accountable for the quality and continuity of supervision. Administrative status concerns membership of a specified public corps and time spent in a particular grade.
All three can matter. Academic rank often reflects experience, and stable institutional affiliation offers important protections for doctoral researchers. But in a system where permanent recruitment is limited or irregular, the absence of a particular grade may reflect the scarcity of state-funded positions rather than the absence of scientific competence.
The cost of making status an absolute gateway
Making administrative status an absolute prerequisite can reduce supervision capacity, especially in emerging or interdisciplinary fields where the number of HR-qualified academics is already small. It can also overload the limited number of formally eligible supervisors as doctoral enrollment expands.
It may also create a gap between formal and substantive supervision. One academic appears as director on official documents while another researcher provides much of the intellectual leadership, methodological guidance and field support. Such arrangements may be understandable, but they are less transparent and can obscure responsibility.
Finally, the rule can discourage productive researchers outside the permanent corps and limit Madagascar’s ability to benefit from returning and diaspora expertise. Researchers who publish, attract grants, build teams and train students may see no route to formal recognition of the responsibilities they already carry.
When recruitment delays become academic exclusion
The HDR rule cannot be understood in isolation from the wider recruitment system. A researcher may need to complete a doctorate, wait for a suitable public recruitment round, secure a permanent appointment, enter the relevant corps, spend at least three years in that grade and only then become eligible to apply for the HDR.
Some stages depend on individual performance. Others depend on government recruitment schedules, the number of posts and administrative procedures that the researcher cannot control. Where first entry into the civil service is also subject to an age limit, institutional delay can become permanent academic exclusion.
This concern has become personally salient as I approach the relevant age threshold. But the policy question is wider: should a researcher lose access to a formal academic pathway because a suitable recruitment opportunity did not arise at the right stage of their career?
A rigorous alternative pathway
The solution is not to remove safeguards or make the HDR easier. It is to create an alternative route to the same demanding assessment.
Researchers outside the prescribed public corps could be permitted to submit a dossier if they meet the same publication and integrity standards, demonstrate substantial research leadership and supervision experience, and hold a recognised affiliation with a Malagasy university or public research institution. Their applications should undergo the same external review, conflict-of-interest safeguards and public defence as those of other candidates.
Universities could also create clearly regulated affiliated positions such as chercheur associé, enseignant-chercheur associé or directeur de recherche affilié. These affiliations should provide formal institutional recognition rather than functioning as symbolic titles. They should be based on explicit selection criteria, clearly defined research or supervision responsibilities, fixed terms and periodic review.
Researchers who already supervise students, lead projects and contribute to university life should be able to have those responsibilities formally recognized, even where a permanent civil-service appointment is not immediately available. Doctoral schools should likewise record the real contribution of scientific, methodological and field co-supervisors.
A national or inter-university commission could examine exceptional applications from researchers who meet the scientific criteria but fall outside the ordinary administrative pathway. Such a route would not create an easier HDR. It would create another way of reaching the same standard.
Protecting standards while widening the pool of excellence
Madagascar should be ambitious about the quality of its research leadership. That ambition requires strong standards, transparent assessment and clear institutional accountability. It also requires making full use of the scientific capacity available to the country.
Allowing qualified researchers outside the permanent public corps to undergo the same rigorous HDR assessment would not weaken the system. Properly designed, it could strengthen research teams, improve doctoral supervision, recognise genuine scientific leadership and help Madagascar train the next generation of scholars it urgently needs.
The HDR question is one expression of a wider challenge: how Madagascar’s universities recruit, recognise and hold academic talent accountable. The second article in this series examines reforms that could begin now, many of them at little or no additional cost.