Albert Rakoto Ratsimamanga was born on 28 December 1907, in Antananarivo, Madagascar, to Razanadrakoto Ratsimamanga and Lala Ralisoa. He was the grandson of Prince Ratsimamanga, uncle and advisor to Queen Ranavalona III, who was executed in 1897 at the beginning of the French colonisation of Madagascar. When Albert was only eleven years old, his father died in 1918 from heavy drinking.
He received his early education at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Antananarivo, until he became a doctor of Indigenous Medicine in 1924. Ratsimamanga was a member of the Malagasy delegation to the 1930 Colonial Exhibition in Paris, during which he decided to join the University of Paris to become a Doctor of Science (MS) and a Doctor of Medicine (MD). He also graduated from the Institute of Exotic Medicine and the Pasteur Institut, and founded the association of Malagasy Students in France.