Scholarship Program for Muslim Communities in Non-Member Countries (SPMC)

Who can apply

A Muslim student from a minority Muslim community in one of the 31 eligible non-member countries listed above; note this is a minority-community scholarship, not a general national scholarship for every student of that nationality
In need of financial assistance without which study may have to stop, described in IsDB's own guidelines as 'academically meritorious but financially needy'
Maximum age of 24 years
Completed senior secondary education (around 12 years) with good grades in major science subjects
Intending to study medicine, engineering, agriculture, or a related field named in the programme's field list; other subjects are not covered
Provided evidence of language proficiency in the university's language of instruction, such as a TOEFL or IELTS certificate
Not living in a country other than their home country at the time of application
Not an IsDB staff member, Executive Director or their alternate, nor a close relative of one
Cannot apply directly to IsDB: a national NGO appointed as the Counterpart Organisation (CPO) announces the local call for applications, verifies documents, and conducts preselection interviews before forwarding candidates
On being awarded, must sign a surety bond committing to return home on completing the studies and to participate in community development, and must repay the scholarship, structured as an interest-free loan, to a local IsDB Education Trust after graduation and employment

The award is a loan, not a grant, and that changes what it actually means for you

Read the fine print here before anything else, because it changes what “scholarship” means for this programme. IsDB structures the SPMC as a Qard Hasan, an interest-free loan, not a straightforward grant. Recipients repay it after graduation and employment, but not to IsDB directly: repayments go in instalments to a local IsDB Education Trust (IET) set up in the student’s own country, and that repaid money is recycled into scholarships for other students from the same community. It is best understood as a loan to the individual student and a grant to the community they belong to, which is also why the programme sits within a wider structure of local community obligations, including a surety bond committing scholars to return home and take part in their community’s development.

This is a minority-community scholarship, not a general national one

The eligible-country list looks, at first glance, like an ordinary country list, but it is not a general “students from Kenya” or “students from India” scholarship. It is restricted specifically to Muslim students who are part of a minority Muslim community within a country that is not itself a member of the Islamic Development Bank. That is why the list is an unusual mix: wealthy non-member states like Australia, Canada, Germany and the Netherlands sit alongside Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, India, Sri Lanka and the Philippines. An applicant from Nigeria or Pakistan will not find themselves on this list at all, not because their need is any less real, but because those countries are IsDB members and are served instead by the Bank’s separate member-country programmes, including the IsDB Master of Science Scholarship Programme for Least Developed Member Countries, already listed on this site. That programme is the newer, master’s-level sibling in the same family; SPMC, launched in 1983, is the original and the only one of the two open at undergraduate level.

Fields of study are restricted, and study usually happens at home

The programme funds a specific, restricted list of subjects: medicine, engineering, agriculture, and related fields such as dentistry, pharmacy, veterinary science, nursing, nutrition, computer science, forestry and fishery. Applicants planning to study something outside that list, however strong their profile, do not fit this scholarship. Consistent with its community-development purpose, the programme’s stated concept is study at a recognised government university in the student’s own country; only a subset of students are instead selected to study abroad, in which case IsDB adds return economy flights and an installation allowance that home-country students do not receive.

The application does not go to IsDB directly

Every application is filtered through a national Counterpart Organisation, a local NGO that IsDB appoints in each eligible country to run the programme on the ground. The CPO announces when the call opens, collects applications, verifies secondary school certificates and financial-need documentation, and conducts preselection interviews before anything reaches IsDB. In practice, the real, binding deadline for someone in Kenya or Sri Lanka is whatever date their own country’s CPO sets, and that date is not published on IsDB’s central website at all.

Why this entry has no deadline, and what to do instead

IsDB’s general scholarships page, as checked for this entry, still states that “the applications period for the IsDB Scholarship Programs for the academic year 2024 – 2025 officially closed,” even though the page itself is headed “Scholarship Programs 2026 – 2027.” The SPMC-specific page separately publishes a country list labelled for “2025-2026,” but no deadline. Neither page gives a usable 2026-2027 date. Rather than waiting on IsDB’s own website to update, applicants from an eligible country are better served finding out who currently holds the CPO role in their country and watching that organisation’s own channels, since the call for applications will appear there first, not on isdb.org.