Sweden, like other European countries, has a long tradition of cooperation in development aid-funded doctoral programs with universities in Africa. The idea is that graduates of these programs will contribute to national development by way of establishing a knowledge society (Samoff, 2004). Nevertheless, there is a plethora of research that indicates African researchers with doctoral degrees struggle to contribute to global knowledge production and progress in research careers, both within and outside of academia (Bezzaoucha et al., 2014; Du Toit & Koorsen, 2022). Although challenges like insecure employment situations, underfunding, and structural inequalities are recognized, there remains limited systematic evidence of the conditions that contribute to the research career outcomes of doctoral holders in African countries. The question is “How do broader systems, institutional environments, and individual circumstances contribute to researchers’ career development in Africa?” We review existing research to identify the structural, institutional, and individual-level conditions that contribute to shaping research careers and to map the methodological approaches that have been used to study researcher career development in African contexts. To provide contextual depth to the findings of this literature review, we will also present preliminary results from a case study of four doctoral programs at an Ethiopian university that are supported by Swedish development aid. Our analytical starting point is Castells’ (2001) contribution to the sociology of universities in development. Castells (2001) indicated several organizational reasons to explain the underdevelopment of research and categorized these as structural conditions (e.g., limited national resources for university research, uneven global scientific development) and institutional conditions (e.g., difficulty in managing scientific activity with other university functions, research infrastructure, policies, mentorship). While Castells (2001) recognized that researchers who are integrated in global scientific networks are among the most needed resources for a university in development, his work did not focus on individuals. Considering the vast literature emphasizing individual conditions, like gender, motivation, discipline, researcher identity, collaboration and networks, and commitment to serving society, we included individual-level conditions in our analysis (Kay & Karmowska, 2025; Musiige & Maassen, 2015). The findings from the literature review and case study point to an emphasis on institutional and individual-level conditions contributing to research career development, while structural conditions have been emphasized to a lesser extent. This raises critical questions about how doctoral education, particularly programs embedded in development aid, are designed to support research career pathways after doctoral education and how they could be reformed.

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