We list 7 fully Funded Masters Social Sciences Scholarships for Nigerian Students, with the deadline, study level and eligibility of each one taken from the award's own terms. Most are held in Australia (1), China (1) and the Netherlands (1). 4 state eligibility that includes Nigerian applicants. Awards with a known closing date are listed soonest first.
These awards do not restrict the field of study, so social sciences applicants can apply too.
Written from the 7 awards on this page — every figure below is counted from what the awards themselves state. 5 min read.
This page collects 7 fully funded master's scholarships in the social sciences that are open to Nigerian students. Every award here is labelled fully funded, and every award here sits at master's level. That combination is deliberate: it means you are not filtering through partial tuition waivers, and you are not competing against doctoral applicants for the same pot.
The awards are hosted in seven different countries — Australia, China, the Netherlands, Qatar, Romania, Switzerland and the United States — one award each. The providers named in the listings include Stanford University, Peking University, the University of Groningen, the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), and participating Australian institutions.
Social sciences is the field filter. The same awards also carry other subject tags, which is why you will see arts and humanities, engineering, business and management, and medicine and health sciences appearing alongside them. If your intended master's sits at the boundary between social science and public policy, or between social science and economics, it is worth reading the individual award pages rather than assuming the filter has already made the decision for you.
Fully funded is not one thing. It is a bundle of benefits, and the bundle varies by award. Here is what the awards on this page state in their own text:
Read those counts as what the awards say in writing, not as a guarantee of what lands in your account. Tuition and accommodation are the most commonly named benefits; research or training costs are named by only one award. If your master's involves fieldwork, archive visits or conference travel, check the individual page before you build a budget around it.
None of the awards on this page leave their funding unlabelled, so there is no ambiguity about which ones are fully funded and which are not.
Four of the seven awards state that Nigerians may apply. Of those four, one names Nigeria or the region explicitly, and three carry no nationality restriction at all. The remaining three awards do not state their eligibility on the award listing itself.
That last group is not a rejection. It means the nationality position is not written on the page we hold, and you will need to open the award and read its own eligibility section. Do not assume an award is closed to you because our listing is silent.
The typical entry qualification is a first degree or HND. The qualifications that lead into this level are B.Sc, B.A, B.Eng, LLB, MBBS and HND. Awards at this level usually state a minimum class of degree, and where an award says "upper second", that corresponds to Second Class Upper (2:1) on a Nigerian transcript. Whether an HND is accepted is decided by each university, not by us and not by the award title — so if you hold an HND, confirm directly with the institution before you spend money on transcripts and courier fees.
The requirements the awards state in writing break down like this:
Letters of recommendation are the near-universal ask. Six of the seven awards name them, which means the practical bottleneck for most Nigerian applicants is not the form — it is getting two or three referees to write, sign and submit on time. Approach your referees early, give them your CV, your statement and the award's own description, and give them a date that is at least two weeks before the real deadline.
Three awards ask for IELTS or TOEFL. If you are applying to an institution that grants waivers on the basis of a previous English-medium degree, that is a conversation to have with the university, not something this page can settle for you. Budget for the test anyway until you have written confirmation.
One award requires an admission offer before you apply. That reverses the usual order: you must first be admitted, then apply for the funding. If that award is on your shortlist, its real deadline is the university's admission deadline, which falls earlier.
Six of the seven awards carry a date. Six are still open. Six recur annually, which matters if you are reading this outside the current cycle — a recurring award will come round again. One award is undated on our listing.
December is the busiest month, with two awards closing. April and October each carry one.
The awards closing soonest are:
Two of these close on the same day, 1 December. If both are on your list, plan for one set of referee requests covering both, and start in October rather than November.
Durations vary. The listings mention a 1.5-year master's programme, a 2-year master's programme, and a range of 1 to 2 years, depending on the award and the institution. One award funds up to the first portion of a longer programme.
Taught and research master's are both represented at this level. If you are coming from a Nigerian B.Sc or HND with a taught programme behind you, a taught master's is the more direct route. A research master's will usually expect you to arrive with a topic, which is where the single research proposal requirement on this page comes in.
Work through the list in deadline order, not in order of prestige. The two December awards are the ones you can still act on with time to spare, and the October award is the nearest date on the page.
Before you open any application, gather the documents that take the longest in Nigeria: your transcript from your university, your degree certificate or statement of result, and your referees' agreement to write. Transcript requests and courier fees come out of your own pocket, so request once and request accurately — check the exact address the institution wants documents sent to, and whether it accepts scanned copies at application stage.
Then read each award's own eligibility section, particularly for the three awards that do not state their nationality position on our listing. That is the single question that decides whether the rest of the work is worth doing.
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