Scholarships for Kenyan Students Abroad in 2027/28

Best scholarships for Kenyan students

Eight schemes accept Kenyan nationals with no country bar.

Stipendium Hungaricum is the widest. Tuition is paid in full, the stipend is HUF 43,700–180,000 per month, insurance is included, and you get a dormitory place or a housing contribution, at bachelor, master’s and doctoral level. Every application must be nominated by Kenya’s Ministry of Education, not only filed with Tempus. The last call closed 15 January 2026; the 2027/28 call was not published as of September 2026. See our Stipendium Hungaricum guide.

Chevening Scholarships funds one taught master’s in the UK: tuition in full, a living allowance, return economy flights and one visa application. The 2027/28 round opened 4 August 2026 and closes 6 October 2026, with results Mid-June 2027 onwards. See our Chevening guide.

DAAD Scholarships funds Germany at postgraduate level through EPOS, for development-related master’s courses, and the Helmut-Schmidt-Programme, for law, economics and public administration. Tuition is waived by university, the stipend is €992–1,400 per month, with insurance and a flight included. You apply to the master’s course itself; applications sent to the DAAD are not forwarded. The Helmut-Schmidt round for 2027/28 closed 31 July 2026; EPOS courses set their own dates. See DAAD scholarships.

Erasmus Mundus Joint Masters is the least restrictive: tuition in full and €1,400 per month for the whole course, taught across universities in at least three countries. You apply to the consortium, usually between October and January, and Sub-Saharan Africa is a targeted region for extra EU-funded places.

Türkiye Bursları (Türkiye Scholarships) pays tuition, a state dormitory place, flights both ways and TRY 4,500–9,000 per month at all three levels; the last window ran 10 January 2026 to 20 February 2026, and every holder takes a year of Turkish first. Banach NAWA Scholarship Programme funds a Polish master’s with tuition in full and PLN 2,500 per month; Kenya and Nigeria are the only two of our nine origins on its list. See Banach-NAWA.

The Italian Government Scholarships for Foreign Students (MAECI) pay €1,200 per month for nine months, leave the fee exemption to the university and fund no travel. OeAD / Ernst Mach Grants pay €1,300 per month for a research stay in Austria rather than a degree, and close 1 December 2026.

What is NOT open to Kenyan students (or only partly)

Three schemes are open only in part.

Commonwealth Scholarships (UK) are marked restricted. Kenya is a Commonwealth member and the nominated master’s route is open, but the eligible list is set scheme by scheme: low and middle income countries for the master’s, least developed and vulnerable states for the PhD. Tuition is paid in full with £1,712–2,000 per month, and applications close 20 October 2026. You cannot apply direct: a nominating body must put your name forward, and it sets its own earlier deadline.

The Eiffel Excellence Scholarship Programme has no eligible-country list, yet it is restricted in practice. Only the French institution can submit the file, the fields are seven priority areas, the age cap is 35, and the grant pays €1,200–2,100 per month but no tuition.

MAEC-AECID Scholarships name Kenya on the África-Med Máster country list, but you must already be a permanent, non-temporary public-sector employee with written authorisation from your superior, and the last call offered up to 41 awards.

Fully funded vs partial — know the difference

Six schemes pay for the degree and the year. Stipendium Hungaricum, Chevening, Commonwealth, Erasmus Mundus, Banach-NAWA and Türkiye Bursları all cover tuition in full and add a monthly allowance; the Hungarian and Turkish awards add housing on top. DAAD works differently: tuition is waived by university rather than paid by the scheme, which comes to the same thing at a public German university, where a bachelor’s is already free.

The rest are top-ups. Eiffel pays €1,200–2,100 per month and no tuition. MAEC-AECID pays €1,500–2,000 per month and no tuition. The Italian government grant pays €1,200 per month and leaves the exemption to the institution. OeAD pays €1,300 per month for a stay of a few months.

“Fully funded” never means every cost. No scheme here pays for document legalisation, your language test, or the months between the offer and the first instalment.

Scholarships by destination

The UK takes more Kenyan students than anywhere else: 3,124 of 23,211 students abroad in 2023. Two government routes exist — Chevening and Commonwealth — and without one, tuition runs £11,400–38,000 per year plus a visa of £558. See UK scholarships.

Germany is second at 1,130. DAAD and Erasmus Mundus are the routes, public tuition is free in any case, and the real barrier is the blocked account of €11,904 per year. See Germany scholarships.

Hungary is third at 460, almost all of it Stipendium Hungaricum, which funds all three degree levels. Self-funded fees there are €3,000–8,000 per year. See Hungary scholarships.

France (246), Italy (240) and Poland (227) are the next tier. France has Eiffel, which your institution submits for you, and public fees of €178–2,902 per year. Italy has the MAECI grant and fees of €200–4,200 per year. Poland has Banach-NAWA and fees of €2,000–6,500 per year.

Austria (67) and Spain (66) are thin. Austrian OeAD grants fund a research stay, and the flat fee of €726.72 per semester applies with or without one. Spain’s national scheme is closed to anyone outside the public service. Ireland (75), Cyprus (38) and Malta (23) have no national scheme with a verified Kenya entry, so Erasmus Mundus is the funded route into all three. Where public fees are already low, the place matters more than the award.

Eligibility & how to win

A Kenyan bachelor’s degree is accepted as the first degree by every scheme here. KCSE on its own qualifies you only for Türkiye Bursları and Stipendium Hungaricum: for Germany it is an indirect entry qualification, needing a Studienkolleg year or a year of Kenyan university first.

Grades, age and work history decide the rest. Commonwealth requires an upper second-class degree or better. DAAD wants an Above-average result in the first academic degree — upper (top performance) third of the cohort and a recent first degree. Türkiye Bursları sets a floor of 70% and an age cap of 35; Eiffel and OeAD cap at 35, the Italian grant at 40. Chevening asks for 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.

Language is the easy part from Kenya. English is an official language (yes) and medium-of-instruction letters are widely accepted (yes), Chevening removed its own English requirement in 2020, and Türkiye Bursları asks for no certificate at application. DAAD still requires IELTS or TOEFL at the level the course sets.

Apply to two or three schemes in the same cycle, not one. Eiffel made 433 awards worldwide last session, and the CSC funds about 800 a year across every Commonwealth country.

Kenya’s own funding

HELB is the national body, and it is marked no for study abroad. Its loans and bursaries cover public and chartered private universities inside the East African Community — Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi — and there is no product for study outside it, Europe included. No Kenyan public body lends money for a degree in Europe.

One government route does exist, and it is administrative rather than financial: Stipendium Hungaricum is marked yes because Kenya is a sending partner, so the Ministry of Education nominates candidates and runs its own national window alongside the Tempus deadline. Watch the Ministry’s advert as well as the Hungarian portal; missing the national step ends the application.

Deadlines to watch

Two are live now. Chevening closes 6 October 2026 for 2027/28 and Commonwealth closes 20 October 2026 for the same intake. OeAD Ernst Mach closes 1 December 2026.

The rest recur, and several 2027/28 calls were still unpublished in September 2026. Stipendium Hungaricum closed 15 January 2026 last time, Eiffel 8 January 2026, Türkiye Bursları 20 February 2026, the Italian call 26 March 2026, Banach-NAWA 8 May 2026 and DAAD’s Helmut-Schmidt round 31 July 2026. Erasmus Mundus has no central date: each consortium publishes its own.

Work backwards from the deadline. Chevening needs two referees and four written answers, Commonwealth needs a nominator, and Kenyan documents need weeks of legalisation. Nominating bodies and the Ministry of Education set earlier national dates.