We list 8 undergraduate Medicine & Health Sciences Scholarships Open to Nigerian Students, with the deadline, study level and eligibility of each one taken from the award's own terms. 5 of them are fully funded. Most are held in China (3), the United Kingdom (2) and the United States (2). Awards with a known closing date are listed soonest first.
These awards do not restrict the field of study, so medicine & health sciences applicants can apply too.
Written from the 8 awards on this page — every figure below is counted from what the awards themselves state. 5 min read.
This collection brings together 8 undergraduate scholarships in medicine and health sciences that are open to Nigerian students. Every award here is for a first degree, so the entry point is your secondary school result rather than a completed B.Sc. If you are finishing WAEC, NECO, NABTEB or SSCE and you want to study medicine, nursing, pharmacy, public health or a related health field abroad, these are the awards currently listed for your level and your field.
The list is not limited to medicine alone. Each of the 8 awards is also tagged under Business & Management, which tells you that most of them are university-wide or government-wide schemes rather than strictly clinical ones. You apply to the institution or the scheme, and your health sciences programme sits inside a much wider set of eligible courses. That is useful to know: it means the competition is not only against other medical applicants.
Of the 8 awards, 5 are labelled fully funded and 1 is labelled partially funded. The remaining awards do not state their funding level either way on the listing, so treat those as unknown until you open the individual page and read the award's own terms.
Where the awards name a benefit in their own text, the pattern is this:
Read those figures as what the awards say in writing, not as a promise that every cost you carry will be met. A fully funded label on a government scheme usually means tuition plus a stipend, but the exact package is set out on the award page and varies by institution and by country. For a Nigerian family budgeting for a medical degree, the gap between tuition and living costs is the part that matters most, so check each page for whether a monthly stipend is mentioned before you plan around it.
The 8 awards sit in four countries:
China carries the largest share, and the two Chinese government schemes on this list are open across undergraduate, master's and doctoral levels. The providers named on the page include Shanghai Universities, Beijing Universities, Boston University, Berea College, the University of Stirling, and participating Australian institutions. Where a provider is listed as a group of universities rather than a single one, the award page carries the list you need to check.
All 8 awards are open to Nigerian students. For 7 of them, no nationality restriction is stated at all, which means the award is written for international students generally and Nigeria is not excluded. 1 award names Nigeria or the wider region directly in its eligibility text. None of the 8 states an eligibility rule that shuts Nigerian applicants out.
That is the headline, but it is not the whole test. Being eligible by nationality is separate from being eligible by qualification. You will still need to meet the entry requirement for the specific degree, and for medicine and health sciences that often means strong grades in the science subjects at senior secondary level. Each award page quotes its own entry requirement, so read it before you spend money on a transcript or a courier.
The requirements stated across these awards are worth planning around because they take time and, in Nigeria, money:
The admission-offer-first requirement is the one that catches people out. It means the scholarship cannot be your starting point; you must apply to the university, receive an offer, and then apply for the funding. That sequence can take months, and it usually runs alongside your WAEC or NECO result processing. Start the university application before you start chasing the scholarship.
Where an English test is required, check the award page carefully. Some institutions waive the test if your previous education was taught in English, and some do not. Do not assume a waiver applies to you; confirm it in writing with the admissions office before you pay for a test slot.
Three awards on this page carry a stated date, three are marked as still open, and three run on a recurring cycle. The busiest months across the list are April, December and June, with one award falling in each.
The three closing soonest are:
The two Chinese schemes on the list do not follow a single fixed date. The Shanghai Government Scholarship (SGS) Fully Funded 2026 - 2027 runs between January and June of each year, and the Beijing Government Scholarship 2026-2027 (Fully Funded) directs you to its own details for the deadline. The Berea College Scholarships 2027 for International Students lists several dates across November, January and March, so you have more than one window to aim at.
Where duration is stated, the awards describe a four-year programme. Two awards state four years, one describes a bachelor's degree programme running four to five years with master's programmes alongside it, and one says four years or longer depending on the major. Medicine is frequently the longer case, so if you are applying for a clinical degree rather than a health sciences degree, confirm that the funding covers the full length of your programme and not just the first four years.
Start with the three dated awards, because those are the ones with a clock on them. Open each page, read the eligibility section, and note whether an admission offer is required before you can apply for the money. If it is, your first task is the university application, not the scholarship form.
Then work through the remaining awards on the list. The Chinese government schemes are worth a close look because they cover undergraduate, master's and doctoral study and appear three times across this collection. The Australian and United Kingdom awards are fewer in number but each is a single, well-defined application.
Before you pay for anything, gather the documents the awards actually ask for: your senior secondary results, your English test if it is required, and the referees who will write your letters of recommendation. Give your referees enough notice. A rushed recommendation letter is one of the few parts of a scholarship application you cannot fix after the deadline.
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