We list 9 phD Business & Management Scholarships for 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 United States (2). 7 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 business & management applicants can apply too.
Written from the 9 awards on this page — every figure below is counted from what the awards themselves state. 5 min read.
This collection brings together 9 PhD scholarships in Business & Management that are open to Nigerian students. Every entry sits at doctoral level, and every one is tagged to the Business & Management field, so you are not filtering through general postgraduate listings to find them.
The awards come from six providers: Stanford University, the Jefferson Scholars Foundation, the University of Tasmania, Participating Australian Institutions, Shanghai Universities and Beijing Universities. Of the nine, 8 are fully funded and 1 is partially funded. Funding is stated on every award here, so you will not find an entry that leaves you guessing whether money is attached.
Several awards on this list also accept applicants at other levels. 8 of the 9 are open to Masters applicants, 5 to Bachelors applicants, and 1 is tagged as a Fellowship. If you are still deciding between a master's and a doctorate, that overlap matters: one application can sometimes put you in front of more than one funding decision.
The nine awards are spread across five countries.
China carries the largest share, and both the Shanghai and Beijing government schemes are open at undergraduate, master's and doctoral level. Australia and the United States follow with two each. The remaining two awards sit in Japan and Singapore, so if your research interest is tied to a particular supervisor or business school in either country, it is worth checking whether that single entry fits your topic before you look elsewhere.
Funding labels tell you the headline; the award text tells you what is actually covered. Across these nine awards, the benefits named in writing are:
Read those as what each award says about itself, not as a promise that every fully funded place covers all six. A stipend for living costs is the most common benefit on this list. Tuition, travel and accommodation appear on fewer awards, and health insurance and research costs on fewer still. Before you build a budget around any single award, open its page and confirm which of these it names. The University of Tasmania Scholarship, for example, states a stipend figure and notes that the rate is indexed annually.
Of the nine awards, 7 are open to Nigerian applicants. Within that group, 1 names Nigeria or the region in its eligibility text, and 6 carry no nationality restriction. Those two figures add up to the seven; they are not separate pools of awards.
The remaining 2 awards do not state their eligibility on the award page. That is not a refusal. It means the information is not written where we can read it, so you would need to check the provider's own terms before spending money on transcripts or a courier.
On qualifications, the route into this level is a master's degree — M.Sc, M.A, MBA or M.Phil. If you hold an HND or a bachelor's degree alone, the doctoral entries here are not the right starting point; look instead at the master's-level awards that appear alongside them on this list.
The requirements stated in writing across these nine awards are worth planning around, because each one costs you time or money.
Recommendation letters are the single most common ask, so line up your referees early. Give them your CV, your transcript and a short note on what you intend to research. Two awards name a minimum degree class, which means your transcript is being screened before anyone reads your proposal. Two ask for IELTS or TOEFL; the rest do not state an English test requirement, which is not the same as a waiver, so confirm with the provider if your degree was taught in English.
One award requires a research proposal and one requires an admission offer before you can be considered. That second requirement changes your order of work entirely: you apply to the university first, then to the funding. For doctoral study in business and management, the programme application and the scholarship often share a single deadline because both depend on a supervisor agreeing to take you.
Four awards carry a stated date, four are still open, and five are undated. Four recur annually. The busiest months across the list are October with two deadlines, then April and February with one each.
The four closing soonest are:
Two of those four sit in October, which is the month to watch. The undated awards are not closed; their providers simply publish deadlines elsewhere, and the recurring ones reopen on a cycle, so a missed date is usually a wait rather than a lost cause.
Start with the four awards whose deadlines are stated, because those are the ones you can plan against. Check the country and the funding label first, then open the award page and read what it says about eligibility, benefits and requirements. If your degree class or English test is named as a condition, deal with that before you order transcripts.
Then look at the two awards that do not state eligibility. Contact the provider directly and ask whether Nigerian applicants are considered, and what documents they need. Do this before you pay for a courier.
Finally, treat the research proposal as the centre of the application, not an afterthought. A doctoral place in business and management usually depends on a supervisor, and one award on this list requires an admission offer before funding is considered. Approach potential supervisors early, and keep your referees informed of every deadline you are working towards.
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