Information on Fellowships for African Students

At UC Berkeley, the International House has a new fellowship, The Daniel Mouen-Makoua Gateway Fellowship, for first-year doctoral students with financial need. Recipients will receive academic year room and board at International House to be matched with tuition and fees from a UC Berkeley department. In addition, the recipient will receive a $5,000 stipend from UC Berkeley's Graduate Division. Students from Sub-Saharan Africa will be given the highest priority. Students will be nominated by the admitting UC department for fellowship consideration. Final selection will be determined by faculty committee review. International House has other fellowships covering room and board for which African students might be eligible.

Below are other links to information that might be useful to students from African countries interested in finding fellowships to study in the United States. Please send updates, additions and corrections to us at asc@berkeley.edu

1. eduPass -- http://www.edupass.org/

A comprehensive web site from FinAid, the Financial Aid Information Page [http://www.finaid.org/] specifically for foreign students. They claim they can help students from the beginning of the process to the end. One page on the site lists schools that have given scholarships to foreign students. [http://www.edupass.org/finaid/undergraduate.phtml] To be included in the lists, the schools must have an average award that is greater than 1/5 of the cost of attendance. Note that none of the ten University of California campuses were listed in 2005.

The site includes free financial aid searches based on a student's particular profile. The site’s database pages can be very slow. This could mean that it is difficult to get to the information if one does not have a high-speed hookup. The database is extensive though and maybe worth the wait.

On this site, there are two pages with information on funding opportunities although this is not specific to African nationals.

• http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/ssrg/africa/grants.html
• http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/ssrg/africa/africaneducation/african-education-financialaid.html

Two of the most relevant links are below, but students would want to look at all the others in case there is something that works for them.

Funding Opportunities for Africans and Foreign Nationals
Very out of date, but a lot of specific programs:

http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/RADW/fundop1.html

http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/RADW/fundop2.html

http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/RADW/fundop3.html

http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/RADW/fundop4.html

http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/RADW/fundop5.html

http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/RADW/fundop6.html

On the Library web site of the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
http://grants.library.wisc.edu/individuals/internationalstudents.html

5. Kubatana.net: 2002-2003 Resource Guide: a Selected List of Fellowships, Scholarships, Grants and other training opportunities for African Women Students/Scholars.

http://www.kubatana.net/html/archive/women/021216iewad.asp?sector=WOMEN

6. Rotary Foundation Ambassadorial program

http://www.rotary.org/foundation/educational/amb_scho/index.html
Most African countries have Rotary Clubs and therefore citizens are eligible. The eligibility criteria are very specific so students need to pay attention to this.

http://www.sas.upenn.edu/African_Studies/Grants/menu_Grants.html
with a special section for international students: http://www.sas.upenn.edu/African_Studies/Grants/International_Students_10206.html
The Penn page changes from time to time so look carefully to see if there is something new.

Try looking at the various web sites for African studies programs around the country. They sometimes have sections which announce fellowships. Wisconsin, for instance, keeps an updated list too. (Not all programs do lacking the staff and resources to maintain such information.) This site lists the URL's for various African Studies programs:
http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/ssrg/africa/asp.html