Scholarships to Study in the UK for African Students 2027

Best scholarships to study in the UK

Two UK government schemes carry most of the money. Chevening Scholarships is funded by the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office and pays for one thing: One academic year — a full-time taught master's starting in the autumn term. Tuition is covered in full, with return economy travel, an arrival and departure allowance and one visa application paid for the scholar. The 2027/28 round opened 4 August 2026 and closes 6 October 2026, with results Mid-June 2027 onwards. Our Chevening scholarship guide covers the four written answers and the interview.

Commonwealth Scholarships (UK) is run by the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission and is the only route here that funds doctoral study: master, phd. Tuition is full, the stipend is £1,712–2,000 per month with the higher rate in London, and approved airfares both ways are included. It closes 20 October 2026, with results By July 2027. The step that ends most applications is the nominator: you apply to the CSC and to a national nominating agency, and the agency sets its own earlier deadline. See our Commonwealth scholarship guide.

Erasmus Mundus Joint Masters is a European Commission scheme, not a UK one. A UK university can sit inside a consortium, but every consortium spans at least three institutions in at least three countries, one of them an EU member state, so it does not fund a straight UK degree — see Erasmus Mundus scholarships.

University money is where undergraduates and most partial awards sit. Cambridge runs the Africa Changemakers Scholarship; Edinburgh hosts the Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program, the Beit Trust award and the Desmond Tutu/Church of Scotland Masters Scholarship; Oxford runs Reach Oxford and the AfOx graduate awards; Manchester runs Equity and Merit; Birmingham runs Chancellor’s Scholarships for Nigeria, Ghana and Kenya. Values and closing dates sit on our UK university pages.

The honest point: what tuition really costs without a scholarship

A bachelor’s at a public UK university costs £11,400–38,000 per year and a taught master’s £9,000–30,000 per year. Medicine is a separate market at £45,000–70,000 per year. The home-student fee cap does not apply to you. Living costs run £1,171–1,529 per month, the lower figure outside London and the higher inside it. On top of tuition and rent comes a visa fee of £558 and the Immigration Health Surcharge at £776 per year for the length of the visa, and you must show £10,539–13,761 before a visa is issued. A partial fee discount does not change that visa arithmetic, because the Home Office counts the money you still have to find. Full costs are on our UK study costs page.

Who is eligible from our countries

Chevening is the broadest: all nine origins we work with are eligible — Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Egypt, South Africa, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Morocco. The rule is citizenship, not region. Citizen of a Chevening-eligible country or territory, meeting the ODA residency requirement where one applies. Holders of British or dual British citizenship are excluded, with limited exceptions, as are applicants resident in the UK at the time of application. Interviews are held in person at the British embassy or high commission of your country of award, between March and April 2027.

Commonwealth is narrower, and the exclusions are what waste applications. Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, Uganda and Zambia are eligible. Kenya is marked restricted, and Egypt, Morocco and Zimbabwe are not eligible at all: Egypt and Morocco are not Commonwealth members, and Zimbabwe does not appear on the 2027/28 eligible-country list. With a Zimbabwean, Egyptian or Moroccan passport, Chevening is the government route to aim at.

Erasmus Mundus sets no nationality bar for any of the nine, and African applicants are a targeted region for extra scholarships funded from the EU’s external instrument.

For scale, the UK hosted 685,565 international students in 2024/25, of whom 37,155 came from Nigeria; our nine origins together are about 8.4 per cent of the total. Country detail starts on our study in the UK from Nigeria page.

Fully funded vs partial — know what you are applying for

“Fully funded” is accurate for both government schemes. Chevening pays tuition in full, travel and a monthly living allowance; Commonwealth pays tuition in full plus £1,712–2,000 per month. Neither provides housing: Not applicable: no accommodation is provided; rent is paid from the monthly living allowance. Chevening covers the scholar only, with no dependants’ allowance; Commonwealth pays a child allowance to single, widowed or divorced parents whose children live with them in the UK, and a spouse allowance on the PhD scheme.

Almost everything else is partial, and partial means a tuition discount rather than a funded degree. University awards run from an automatic fee reduction applied when you accept an offer, through named merit awards, to a small number of genuinely full packages — Cambridge’s Africa Changemakers and Edinburgh’s Mastercard Foundation places among them. GREAT Scholarships, offered at Manchester, Nottingham, Southampton and Warwick, are a fixed cut off postgraduate tuition, not a full ride; the 2026-entry rounds have closed and 2027-entry details were not published as of September 2026.

Eligibility — grades, age, degree level, language

Level first. Chevening funds master only, Commonwealth funds master, phd, Erasmus Mundus funds master. There is no UK government scholarship for a bachelor’s degree; undergraduate money comes from individual universities.

Grades divide the two schemes. Commonwealth sets a floor: Upper second-class (2:1) honours, or lower second-class with a relevant postgraduate qualification; a contextualised route exists for disabled applicants nominated through the Commonwealth Disabled People's Forum. Chevening publishes no minimum grade; the test is a degree that qualifies you for your chosen UK master’s, plus an unconditional offer from that university.

Chevening’s real filter is work, counted in hours: At least 2,800 hours acquired after the undergraduate degree and over a minimum of two years — roughly two years of full-time work at 35 hours a week; full-time, part-time and voluntary work and paid or unpaid internships count, entered as up to 15 employment periods. Commonwealth asks for none.

Neither scheme runs its own English test; both send you to the university’s requirement instead. The usual floor is IELTS 6 for a bachelor’s and 6.5 for a master’s, set course by course — see studying in the UK without IELTS. Neither publishes an age limit, though some university awards do.

How to apply

1. September 2026 — pick your scheme and check the passport rule first. You cannot hold Chevening and Commonwealth at the same time, and Chevening excludes anyone who has already studied in the UK on a UK government-funded scholarship.
2. September 2026 — shortlist courses. Chevening needs three different eligible full-time taught master’s courses from its own course finder; Commonwealth expects you to have applied to up to three UK universities and courses in advance.
3. Late September 2026 — line up two referees, and for Commonwealth full transcripts of every higher education qualification, with certified translations where they are not in English.
4. Submit Chevening by 6 October 2026. The form cannot be changed after submission, and reference letters follow later, before the interview.
5. Submit Commonwealth by 20 October 2026, and apply to your national nominating agency in parallel. Nominators run their own selection and nominate to the CSC in December 2026.
6. October 2026 to January 2027 — if you are also trying Erasmus Mundus, apply to each consortium separately and mark the scholarship request.
7. February to April 2027 — Chevening shortlists from mid-February and interviews at the British embassy or high commission between March and April.
8. June to July 2027 — results arrive Mid-June 2027 onwards and By July 2027. Chevening scholars submit an unconditional offer in July, then apply for the UK Student visa at £558, decided in 3 weeks.