The University of Cape Town demonstrates a strong commitment to supporting academically deserving students from low and lower-middle income countries.

For international African students, UCT is a partner institution of the Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program, which offers full-cost scholarships (tuition, accommodation, living allowance, mentoring and leadership development) to academically talented young people from economically disadvantaged backgrounds across sub-Saharan Africa. These scholarships significantly remove financial barriers for young African leaders seeking full-degree (undergraduate/Honours/Masters’) study at UCT.

In addition to fee-remission and bursary programmes, UCT’s institutional policy for tuition fee waivers allows the university to grant fee-adjustments or waivers (including for international/SADC students under specific conditions) under its “Student Tuition Fee Waivers” policy, thereby creating additional flexibility to support students who face financial hardship. Students from the SADC region pay fees equivalent to those paid by South African students, and are not charged the usual international tuition fees.

UCT participates in EU-funded mobility and EMJM initiatives, enabling students from South Africa to access fully-funded EU scholarships.

The University of Cape Town is an active partner in Erasmus+ Capacity-Building projects emerging from the 2024–25 CBHE rounds — notably the SAMOS/AOS-SAMOS consortium to develop a South African Master in Ocean Sciences — which include funded student and staff mobility, pilot cohort support and capacity-building scholarships for partner institutions. Participation in Erasmus+ CBHE projects provides EU-funded mobility and scholarship opportunities for UCT students and staff and complements UCT’s other international scholarship schemes.

In addition, the Erasmus+ programme (including EMJMD / Erasmus Mundus opportunities and the broader Erasmus+ CBHE calls) continues to provide fully funded scholarships, mobility grants and tuition coverage for eligible participants; South Africa and its HEIs can be partners in CBHE projects, and South African students are eligible to apply to EMJMDs.

Collectively, these interventions reflect UCT’s systemic approach to financial inclusion, enabling students from the lowest income backgrounds and from marginalised contexts across Africa to access and persist in higher education — aligning directly with UCT’s Vision 2030 goal to “unleash human potential to create a fair and just society.”