We list 16 fellowship Scholarships Open to Nigerian Students, with the deadline, study level and eligibility of each one taken from the award's own terms. 12 of them are fully funded. Most are held in the United States (8), Canada (2) and Germany (2). Awards with a known closing date are listed soonest first.
United States
8
Written from the 16 awards on this page — every figure below is counted from what the awards themselves state. 5 min read.
This page collects 16 fellowship scholarships that are open to Nigerian students. Every one of them sits at fellowship level, and every one of them is listed because a Nigerian applicant can apply. That is the whole filter: fellowship, and no nationality bar that would shut you out.
The list is not a single programme and it is not one country. It pulls together awards from universities, foundations and research institutes in seven countries, and it mixes short non-degree fellowships with doctoral research posts and postdoctoral positions. If you are looking for one application that solves everything, this is not that. If you are looking for a set of awards you can work through over a season, it is a reasonable starting point.
All 16 awards on this page are open to Nigerian applicants. Of those, 15 carry no nationality restriction at all in the award text, and 1 names Nigeria or the region specifically. Those two figures are drawn from the same 16, not stacked on top of each other.
That split matters for how you read a call. An award with no nationality restriction is usually competing globally, and the field is wide. An award that names a country or region is narrower by design, and your passport is doing part of the work for you. Neither is automatically easier. What you can rely on is that none of the 16 awards states an eligibility rule that excludes Nigerians — the brief records no award on this page where eligibility is left unstated.
Funding labels are uneven across the list. 12 awards are marked fully funded, 1 is marked partially funded, and 3 do not label their funding either way. For those three, the brief does not say what they cover, so treat the individual award page as the only source.
Where awards do spell out benefits, the pattern is practical rather than glamorous:
Read that list again, because it tells you something about fellowship funding. Travel and living costs appear far more often than tuition. Many fellowships are not degree programmes — they are placements, research stays or non-degree positions — so there is no tuition line to fund. If you need a full master's or PhD funded end to end, check the individual award rather than assuming the word "fellowship" means a full scholarship.
Fellowship is the level of all 16 entries, but the awards also carry a second level tag, which is what the work actually is:
So this is not a page for final-year undergraduates only. There is real space here for doctoral researchers and for people who have already finished a PhD and want a funded research post abroad.
By country, the United States carries 8 awards, followed by Canada and Germany with 2 each, then Australia, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom with 1 each. The American weight is worth noting when you plan referees and transcripts — a US-heavy shortlist usually means more than one application with overlapping documents.
Field tags are sparse. Arts & Humanities appears on 2 awards, Engineering on 1 and Natural Sciences on 1. Most awards on this page do not carry a field tag in the brief, so do not read the small numbers as a sign that your subject is excluded. Check the award itself.
Requirements named in the award text, counted across the 16:
Letters of recommendation are the single most common ask, and they are the one item you cannot rush. A Nigerian referee who has moved institutions, or who wants a draft before signing, needs weeks. Start there.
Only 2 awards state a minimum degree class. If yours is a Second Class Lower, that is not automatically fatal on this list — but where a class is named, it is a stated requirement, not a preference. Only 1 award names an English test score. Where an award does not name one, do not assume a waiver exists; ask the provider directly.
The return-home commitment appears once. If you are applying to that award, read the condition carefully before you commit to it.
Nine awards carry a stated date. Eight are still open. Seven are undated in the brief, and eight are recurring — meaning the cycle comes round again even if you miss this round.
The busiest months are November (3 deadlines), then June and October with 2 each. November is the crunch. If you are aiming at this list, your documents should be in motion by early October.
The awards closing soonest:
One more sits further out: the Forrest Research Foundation Post-doctoral Fellowships 2026-2027 in Australia closes 31 May.
The awards come from a mix of universities and foundations, including the University of British Columbia, McGill University, the University of Pavia and EDiSU, the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, the ACI Foundation and the Future Leaders Foundation. Some are run by a single institution; others, like the Schlumberger Foundation Faculty for the Future Fellowships, are hosted across leading universities worldwide.
Durations vary widely where stated — one award runs four years, another runs four to twelve weeks in 2027, and at least one is offered for the academic year from August to May. Check the individual page rather than assuming a fellowship is a one-year commitment.
Work from the deadlines first. If you can meet 31 October or 1 November, the Krukoff and ACI Foundation awards are the immediate targets, and both are fully funded. If your calendar is tighter, the Leo Baeck Fellowship in March and the Forrest Research Foundation in May give you room to prepare a proper research proposal and referee letters.
Then sort by level. Doctoral and postdoctoral applicants should look at the 7 PhD and 6 postdoctoral entries; master's applicants at the 5 master's entries. Confirm the funding line on each award page before you invest weeks in an application, especially for the 3 awards that do not label their funding. And request your transcripts and referee letters early — those are the two things Nigerian applicants most often cannot speed up at the last minute.
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