We list 4 public Policy & Development Scholarships for Nigerian Students, with the deadline, study level and eligibility of each one taken from the award's own terms. 4 of them are fully funded. Most are held in China (1), Japan (1) and Qatar (1). 2 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 public policy & development applicants can apply too.
Written from the 4 awards on this page — every figure below is counted from what the awards themselves state. 6 min read.
This page collects 4 scholarships in the field of Public Policy & Development. Every one of the four is labelled fully funded by the provider, so there is no partial award here to weigh against a self-funded option. The awards are hosted in four different countries — China, Japan, Qatar and Switzerland — and each country appears once.
The list is small and deliberately narrow. It is not a general funding directory. If you are looking for a scholarship to study public policy, development studies, governance or a closely related master's, this is the set worth reading in full.
Two of the four carry a stated award count. The Schwarzman Scholars Program states up to 140; the Asian Development Bank – Japan Scholarship Program states about 300 awarded annually. The other two do not publish a number on the award itself.
All four awards are described as fully funded. Beyond that label, the benefit wording on the awards themselves is specific, and it is worth reading as written rather than as an assumption.
Where an award does not name a benefit in its own text, treat that benefit as unconfirmed and check the individual award page before you build a budget around it. The distinction matters most for accommodation and travel, since those are the two lines a Nigerian applicant is most likely to have to fund in the gap between an offer and the first stipend payment.
All 4 awards are open at Masters level. 1 of the 4 is also open at PhD level — the Asian Development Bank – Japan Scholarship Program, which is listed as Masters / PhD.
Two of the awards state a duration of 1 year. For a Nigerian applicant holding a B.Sc or HND, a one-year master's abroad compresses the transcript, reference and visa timeline into a much shorter window than a two-year programme, and the funding has to cover the whole of it. Plan the document side before you plan the travel side.
The awards are tagged to more than one subject, so the same scholarship can appear under several headings. The subject spread across this set is:
If your first degree is in economics, political science, law or a development-adjacent field, you are looking at a set that was built for that background. If your degree is in a technical or pure science discipline, the fit is narrower and you should read each award's own eligibility text closely before investing in an application.
Of the 4 awards on this page, 2 state that Nigerians may apply. Within that group of 2, none names Nigeria or the West African region specifically, and 2 carry no nationality restriction at all. The remaining 2 do not state their eligibility on the award itself.
Read that carefully. An award that does not name a nationality restriction is not the same as an award that is open to everyone, and an award that does not state eligibility is not the same as an award that excludes you. Where eligibility is not stated on the award, the answer sits in the provider's own rules, and you should confirm it before you spend money on transcripts or couriered documents.
None of the four awards names Nigeria or the region directly. That is the single most important thing to understand about this list: nothing here is a Nigeria-specific or Africa-specific scheme. You are applying into an open or unstated pool, and your case has to stand on its own.
The requirements stated on the awards themselves are as follows:
The English test requirement is the one that catches Nigerian applicants most often, and it is worth being blunt about why. All four awards state it. If you are applying from a Nigerian university where the medium of instruction was English, you may still be asked for IELTS or TOEFL unless the provider's own rules grant a waiver — and the waiver, where it exists, is the provider's decision, not yours to assume. Budget for the test and book the date early, because a test slot you cannot get is a deadline you cannot meet.
Three of the four ask for letters of recommendation. Approach your referees early and give them the award name, the deadline and a summary of what you are applying for. A generic letter written in a hurry reads like one.
One award states a minimum degree class, and one requires an admission offer before the scholarship application. That second requirement changes your sequence entirely: you apply to the institution first, wait for the offer, and only then apply for funding. Work backwards from the funding deadline to find your real start date.
Two of the four awards have a stated date. Two are still open. Two are undated on the award itself, and two are recurring — meaning the cycle repeats, so a missed year is not necessarily a closed door.
The busiest months in this set are January and May, with one award closing in each. The two closing soonest are:
The other two — the Geneva Academy Scholarship and the Asian Development Bank – Japan Scholarship Program — show "Deadline: see details" on the award. That is not a missing date on this page; it means the date sits with the provider and has to be confirmed there.
Start with the Doha Institute award, because it closes first. Open its page, read the eligibility text in full, and confirm whether a Nigerian degree holder with your subject background is eligible and whether an English test is required or waived. If the answer is yes on both, the transcript and reference requests should go out the same week.
Then work through the remaining three in order of how much they ask of you. The Asian Development Bank – Japan Scholarship Program is the only one on this page open at PhD level and the only one with a stated award count in the hundreds, but its deadline is not published on the award, so the first task there is finding the date. The Geneva Academy award is similarly undated. The Schwarzman Scholars Program gives you the longest runway, closing 20 May, and states up to 140 awards.
Two practical points before you commit money. First, none of these four awards names Nigeria or the region, so assume you are competing in an open pool and write accordingly. Second, where an award does not state a benefit — travel, accommodation, insurance — do not treat it as covered. Confirm it in writing with the provider, because the difference between a funded year and a funded year plus a shortfall is the difference between finishing and coming home early.
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