We list 5 high School Scholarships Open to Nigerian Students, with the deadline, study level and eligibility of each one taken from the award's own terms. 3 of them are fully funded. Most are held in Germany (2), the United States (2) and Australia (1). Awards with a known closing date are listed soonest first.
Written from the 5 awards on this page — every figure below is counted from what the awards themselves state. 5 min read.
This collection brings together 5 high school scholarships open to Nigerian students. Every award here sits at secondary school level and is open to Nigerian applicants. The list is narrow on purpose: these are awards you can apply for as a Nigerian student without first holding a foreign passport or residency.
Of the 5, 3 are fully funded and 1 is partially funded. One award does not label its funding either way, so read that award's own page before you plan around it. The awards come from providers including The Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, the ACI Foundation, the Forrest Research Foundation and Australian universities, the Neufert-Foundation, and a group listed as leading universities worldwide.
If you are still at secondary school in Nigeria, or you have finished WAEC or NECO and are looking at a school-level place abroad, this is the page to work through. If you already hold a B.Sc, HND or M.Sc, the other levels on this site will fit you better.
The host countries are Germany (2), the United States (2) and Australia (1). That spread matters for cost and paperwork. A German award usually means a blocked account and a student visa route that takes weeks; a US award means a longer admissions cycle and often an interview; an Australian award means a different academic calendar, with the year starting in the months Nigeria is deep in rain.
On what the awards say they pay for, the brief is thin and you should treat it that way. One award names travel. One names accommodation. Those are the only two benefit categories stated in writing anywhere in this collection. For everything else, the funding label is what you have: fully funded or partially funded, with one award silent on the question.
Do not assume a fully funded label covers flights, visa fees, health cover or a laptop. Check the award page, then check it again against the current year's call. Funding text changes between cycles and older pages stay online.
This is the strongest part of the collection. All 5 awards are open to Nigerian students, and the reason is straightforward: none of the 5 names Nigeria or a region as a restriction. All 5 carry no nationality restriction at all. None of the 5 leaves eligibility unstated on the award itself.
That is a cleaner position than many collections on this site. It means your nationality is not the hurdle here. The hurdle is the level. High school awards are built around applicants who are finishing secondary education, and the paperwork they ask for reflects that.
Two things still need checking on each award page before you spend money. First, whether the award expects you to already be enrolled at a particular school or in a particular country's system. Second, whether it is aimed at a specific subject. The fields named in this collection are Arts & Humanities (1), Engineering (1) and Natural Sciences (1). The remaining awards do not state a field, so read their pages rather than assuming they are open to any subject.
The brief records only two stated requirements across the whole collection, and both are worth planning around now.
Those are the only two requirements the brief carries. That does not mean other awards ask for nothing. It means the brief does not record their requirements, so you must open each award page and read the document list yourself. Expect the usual school-level file: transcripts or results slips, a passport or birth certificate, a personal statement, and proof of your current school.
On transcripts and courier costs, plan the timeline backwards. WAEC and NECO result verification, school transcripts and couriered hard copies all take working days, not hours, and none of them speed up because a deadline is close.
Four of the 5 awards carry a date and are still open. One is undated. Four are recurring, meaning the cycle returns, so a missed year is not always a lost cause.
The busiest months are November (2) and May (2). If you are building a calendar, those are the two months to protect.
The awards closing soonest are:
One further award, the Heinrich Böll Foundation Scholarship 2026-2027, runs on two dates in its cycle, in September and March, and is based in Germany.
Note the shape of the list before you commit time. Several of these awards sit at levels above secondary school even though they appear in a school-level collection, and the brief records levels including Fellowship (3), Masters (3), PhD (3), Postdoctoral (3) and Bachelors (1) alongside High School (5). Read the level on each award page and match it to where you actually are. A fellowship for doctoral researchers is not a route into secondary school, and applying to the wrong level wastes a reference letter you cannot easily replace.
Start with the two November deadlines if either fits your level. They are the nearest and the least forgiving. Then take the May pair, which gives you a full academic year to assemble documents properly.
For each award you shortlist, do four things in this order. Open the award page and read the eligibility line yourself. Confirm the study level matches where you are now. Write down every document named, then check which ones you already hold and which need a school visit or a payment. Finally, note whether the award states funding in writing or leaves it unlabelled, and decide whether you can proceed without that certainty.
Keep your referee list short and reliable. Two people who will answer their phone in November are worth more than five who might.
Read the four dated awards on this page first, in deadline order, and open the undated one last. Apply to more than one; nothing here prevents it, and the requirements overlap enough that one set of transcripts and one reference letter can serve several applications.
If none of the 5 fits your current level, move to the other levels on this site. The same providers appear there, and the eligibility position for Nigerian applicants is worth checking on each collection before you rule anything out.
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