We list 10 masters Engineering Scholarships Open to Nigerian Students, with the deadline, study level and eligibility of each one taken from the award's own terms. 8 of them are fully funded. Most are held in China (3), Australia (2) and the Netherlands (1). Awards with a known closing date are listed soonest first.
These awards do not restrict the field of study, so engineering applicants can apply too.
Written from the 10 awards on this page — every figure below is counted from what the awards themselves state. 5 min read.
This page collects 10 masters engineering scholarships open to Nigerian students. Every award here is at masters level and in engineering. Each one is either named for Nigeria or its region, or carries no nationality restriction at all — the brief records 2 awards that name Nigeria or the region, and 8 with no nationality restriction. No award on this page leaves eligibility unstated.
That matters because most scholarship search results for Nigerian students are mixed lists: undergraduate awards, PhD awards, and awards restricted to citizens of countries you do not hold. This page strips that out. What remains is a short list you can work through in an afternoon.
Seven of the ten also accept PhD applicants, and four accept bachelors applicants, so some entries will appear on other pages of this site. If you are applying for a masters in engineering, read the ten entries here first.
The ten awards sit in seven countries.
China carries the largest share by some distance, and the entries there are government-linked rather than single-university awards, which changes how you apply. Australia follows with two. The remaining five countries carry one each, so if you have already decided on a destination, you may be looking at a single entry on this page.
Eight of the ten are labelled fully funded and two are labelled partially funded. Read that label against the award's own text before you plan around it, because "fully funded" is used loosely across providers.
When the awards state what they cover, this is what they name:
These are the benefits written into the award text, not a promise that every fully funded award covers all of them. If tuition and living costs are the two lines that decide whether you can go, check each award individually rather than trusting the funding tag.
The pathway into this level is straightforward. You hold a first degree or HND — B.Sc, B.A, B.Eng, LLB, MBBS or HND — and you are applying for a taught or research masters.
Awards at this level usually state a minimum class of degree. Where an award asks for an "upper second", that corresponds to Second Class Upper (2:1) on a Nigerian transcript. Three of the ten awards state a minimum degree class in their own text, so the rest either do not specify one or handle it at university level.
Whether an HND is accepted is decided by each university, not by this page. If you hold an HND and the award text is silent, ask the admissions office directly before you spend money on a transcript.
The requirements below are what the awards state in writing. They are the things you can prepare for now.
Letters of recommendation are the single most common requirement, so line up your referees early. Two awards will not even consider you until you hold an admission offer, which means the university application and the scholarship application are not separate tasks — the second depends on the first.
English test scores and transcripts cost money and take time to arrive. Start those before you start writing.
Five awards carry a dated deadline, five are still open, and five are recurring. Ten awards are listed, so some fall into more than one of those groups.
The busiest months are October with 2 deadlines, then April and December with 1 each.
Five awards close soonest. In order:
Five of the ten are recurring, which means a missed deadline is not always a lost cause — the award returns. The Shanghai Government Scholarship, for instance, runs between January and June of each year.
The providers on this page are a mix of national schemes, single universities and city-level government programmes.
Where a provider is a group of universities rather than one institution, you will usually apply through the individual university and the award follows. Check the entry itself for how the application is routed.
Work the list in deadline order. The Stanford award closes 8 October, so if it interests you, that is the first application to open. The Groningen award closes 1 December and the Chalmers award 15 January, which gives you room to prepare a stronger file for both.
Before you write anything, gather the documents that take longest: your transcript, your degree certificate, and referee commitments. Five awards ask for recommendation letters, and referees at Nigerian universities are busy — ask early and give them the deadline in writing.
If an award asks for an English test score, book the test before you draft the application. Three awards state that requirement, and a test date you cannot meet will cost you the application regardless of how strong the rest of your file is.
Finally, read the funding text on each award rather than the label. Eight are marked fully funded and two partially funded, but the benefits named in the award text — tuition, living costs, travel, research or training costs, accommodation, health insurance — vary from one entry to the next. The award you choose should be the one whose stated benefits match what you actually need to get to the classroom.
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