DAAD In-Country/In-Region Scholarship Programme (Sub-Saharan Africa)

Who can apply

Hold a Bachelor's or Master's degree, and be from Sub-Saharan Africa, Central or South America, South or Southeast Asia, or the Middle East (this entry covers the Sub-Saharan Africa programme specifically)
Apply for a consecutive Master's degree or a PhD at a selected host institution in your home country (In-Country) or home region (In-Region)
Apply directly to the specific host institution and programme; DAAD does not run one central application
Female applicants and candidates from disadvantaged groups are especially encouraged; the programme particularly aims to train future university teachers

Not the DAAD scholarship most applicants think of first

This is not the DAAD scholarship most applicants think of first. Rather than funding study in Germany, the In-Country/In-Region programme funds a master’s degree or PhD at a university in your own country (In-Country) or within your home region (In-Region), aimed specifically at training the next generation of university teachers and professionals for Sub-Saharan Africa and other developing regions. DAAD’s own figures give a sense of scale: 267 new scholarships were awarded across the programme in 2023 alone, with over 38 percent going to applicants from least developed countries and close to 39 percent going to women, across 55 supported host institutions.

What in-region scholars get that in-country scholars don’t

Coverage usually includes tuition fees, a monthly scholarship rate, a study and research allowance, and a printing allowance for your final thesis. If you’re an In-Region scholar, meaning you study somewhere in your home region rather than your home country, you also usually get a travel allowance and funding for health insurance; In-Country scholars, studying at home, do not need or receive those, since the logic is that a scholar staying in their own country has no relocation costs to offset.

Why this programme exists at all

DAAD’s own background explains the reasoning behind the whole programme: many developing countries have too few top-level university teachers in development-related subjects, which caps how many students their own universities can properly train, so DAAD built this scholarship specifically to grow that teaching capacity from within the region rather than exporting talent to Germany and hoping some of it returns. Partner universities benefit directly too, receiving the tuition fees paid on each scholar’s behalf, which is part of why DAAD describes them as intermediaries rather than passive hosts.

No single deadline, because there is no single call

There is no single deadline to track, because DAAD runs this programme through individual host institutions rather than one central call. The current open calls cover scholarships starting between January and July 2027 at selected Sub-Saharan African institutions, but each one is published as its own PDF in DAAD’s scholarship database, with its own dates and its own application process. You apply directly to the host institution and programme you want, not to DAAD centrally, so the practical first step is finding your field and country in DAAD’s own database rather than assuming a single Germany-wide deadline applies. If studying in Germany itself is what you actually want, DAAD runs a separate programme for the same kind of development-focused applicant: DAAD EPOS funds postgraduate study at a German university rather than one in your own country or region.