We list 3 phD Scholarships Open to Nigerian Students in the United Arab Emirates, with the deadline, study level and eligibility of each one taken from the award's own terms. 3 of them are fully funded. Awards with a known closing date are listed soonest first.
Written from the 3 awards on this page — every figure below is counted from what the awards themselves state. 5 min read.
This page collects 3 PhD scholarships open to Nigerian students in the United Arab Emirates. Every award here is labelled Fully Funded by the provider, so you are not comparing a funded place against a partial fee waiver. All three are based in the United Arab Emirates, and none of the three restricts nationality, which is why they appear on a list built for Nigerian applicants.
The three providers are Khalifa University, the American University of Sharjah and Muhammad Bin Zaid University. Each appears once. The awards are not all doctoral-only: the levels named across the three are Masters, PhD and Bachelors, with the Bachelors route appearing on one award and the Masters and PhD routes appearing on all three. If you already hold a master's degree and are looking for a funded doctoral place, all three are relevant to you.
The eligibility picture on this page is unusually clean. Of the 3 awards, 3 carry no nationality restriction, and 0 name Nigeria or the region in their eligibility text. That means you qualify on the same terms as any other international applicant, and your case rests on your academic record, your documents and your research fit rather than on your passport.
The route into these programmes for a Nigerian applicant is a master's degree. The qualifications that lead in are M.Sc, M.A, MBA and M.Phil. Funded doctoral places and research scholarships in the UAE are often tied to a supervisor or a research group, so the programme application and the scholarship application frequently share one deadline. Treat them as a single process rather than two.
None of the three awards leaves eligibility unstated, so you are not guessing about whether you are allowed to apply. You are allowed. What you have to prove is that you are ready.
All 3 awards are fully funded. Beyond that headline, the individual award texts name specific benefits, and the counts below are what those texts say in writing, not a promise about your particular offer.
Read each award page for the exact wording before you build a budget. A fully funded label can cover tuition and a stipend, or tuition and a set of allowances, and the difference matters when you are converting naira and planning what you must cover yourself. One award text also carries a duration note referring to a full-time master's degree of 2 years, which tells you the funded period is defined by the programme rather than open-ended.
Note the shape of the American University of Sharjah award: it runs from undergraduate through to PhD, so a doctoral applicant is competing inside a broader scheme rather than a doctoral-only one. Muhammad Bin Zaid University runs Masters and Doctoral routes together. Khalifa University lists Masters and PhD.
The requirements the award texts state are worth planning around early, because two of them cost money and time from Nigeria.
The English test is the item that catches most Nigerian applicants out, not because the test is hard but because booking a slot, sitting it and getting the score to the university takes weeks you may not have if you start late. If you are applying to the two awards that name a test, budget for it now. Where a test is not named, do not assume a waiver exists either — check the award page and the department.
The minimum degree class requirement is where Nigerian transcripts need care. A 2:1, a 2:2 or an HND classification is read differently by different admissions offices, and a strong master's result can carry more weight at doctoral level than your first degree. If your class is borderline, the research proposal and your referee letters do the persuading. That is exactly why the one award asking for a proposal is worth your best writing: it is the document you fully control.
Letters of recommendation take the longest to arrange from Nigeria, because your referees are often still in the department where you studied and are handling many such requests. Ask early, give them your CV and your proposal summary, and follow up politely rather than repeatedly.
The deadline picture across the 3 awards is mixed, and that is useful rather than confusing. One award has a fixed date, one is still open, two are undated in the listing, and one recurs. The busiest month named is April, with one award falling in it.
The award closing soonest is Khalifa University Scholarship 2027, which closes 14 April, with 188 days left at the time of writing. That is the date to work backwards from. If you intend to apply there, the English test, the transcript request and the referee letters all have to be in motion well before April, because a Nigerian transcript sent by courier does not arrive on the day you post it.
The Muhammad Bin Zaid University award gives you a later fixed date, 15th January 2027 on the regular deadline, with a second date in May. The American University of Sharjah award shows "see details", so open the page and read the current cycle rather than assuming a month. Where a listing is undated, the safe assumption is that the cycle runs annually and the next window will resemble the last one.
Start with the award that has the nearest date. Open the Khalifa University page, read the eligibility and the document list in full, and write down every item you do not yet have. Then do the same for the other two.
Three practical steps follow from that. First, book your English test if you need one, since two of the three awards name it. Second, order your transcripts and confirm the courier timeline from your Nigerian institution, because that is the step outside your control. Third, draft the research proposal to the length and format the award asks for, and send it to your referees along with your CV so their letters can speak to the same project.
With three fully funded awards, no nationality restriction on any of them, and one deadline still 188 days out, the constraint here is preparation rather than access. Work the list in date order and give each application the documents it actually asks for.
Looking for a fully funded opportunity to study in the Middle East’s most dynamic academic hub? The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has emerged as a top destination for Nigerian students, thanks to its world-class universities, cutting-edge research facilities, and generous scholarship programs.
For the academic year 2025-2026, several fully funded scholarships in UAE are available to outstanding international students pursuing bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees. These scholarships typically cover tuition fees, monthly stipends, free accommodation, visa support, health insurance, and in some cases, travel expenses.
The UAE is home to prestigious universities such as United Arab Emirates University (UAEU), Khalifa University, Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI), and American University of Sharjah, all of which offer generous funding for exceptional students.
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