MINDS Scholarship Programme for Leadership Development

Tuition, accommodation, a return flight and a living stipend for African nationals moving to a different African country for a one- to two-year Honours or Master's degree at one of over 24 MINDS partner universities. No central deadline is published, and you need a university offer first.

Checked 20 Sept 2026Share

Who can apply

National of an African country, residing anywhere on the continent
Between 18 and 45 years old at the time of application
Formal acceptance from one or more MINDS-preferred institutions, in a country other than your own
Admitted to begin postgraduate (Honours or Master's) study in the following academic year
At least 70% in each subject over the last two completed years of study
Evidence of leadership experience or potential, per the application form
Refugees and applicants living with disabilities are eligible, provided they are African nationals and meet the criteria above

A university offer, not a calendar date, is the real gate

The gate that matters here isn’t a calendar date, it’s a university offer. MINDS doesn’t run its own admissions cycle with a fixed deadline; you apply to MINDS only after a preferred partner institution has already accepted you for postgraduate study the following academic year. That partner university’s own deadline is therefore the real constraint, and it will fall well before anything MINDS itself publishes.

Continental mobility is the whole point, not a minor detail

The requirement to study outside your own country is not a minor detail: MINDS’ own FAQ states plainly that you cannot use this scholarship to study at home, even at a listed partner institution, because the programme is built around continental mobility. The partner list spans more than 24 universities across East, North, Southern and West Africa, including the University of Cape Town, Makerere, Cairo University, KNUST and Carnegie Mellon Africa in Rwanda, and MINDS does not restrict you to a particular subject: the FAQ names fields from health and engineering to arts and social sciences as all eligible, provided the discipline connects to leadership and African development.

The academic bar, and who’s explicitly welcome to apply

The academic bar is a flat 70% across your last two years of study, which travels less smoothly than a GPA if your transcript uses a different scale, so check your own conversion before assuming you clear it. Refugees and applicants living with disabilities are explicitly told they can apply, as long as they hold African nationality and meet the standard criteria, a detail MINDS states directly rather than leaving to inference.

A think tank founded in 2010, now on its 16th cohort

MINDS itself was established in 2010 by Dr. Nkosana Moyo, a former Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of the African Development Bank, as an Africa-wide think tank based in Johannesburg working on governance, economic development and African institution-building. The scholarship programme has since run through 16 named cohorts, and MINDS backs its credibility with real placed scholars rather than a generic pitch, including recipients studying political communication at the University of Cape Town, artificial intelligence engineering at Carnegie Mellon Africa in Rwanda, and public health across multiple partner universities. If you’re weighing this against another Mandela-linked leadership scholarship, the Mandela Rhodes Scholarship runs on a similar leadership-development premise but funds study within a single country, South Africa, rather than mobility between African countries.