Pan African University Scholarships: 2026-2027 Call Closed, Next Call Not Announced

Status: historical reference; the last student call is closed. The Pan African University (PAU) call for scholarships for academic year 2026-2027 opened on 15 November 2025 and closed on 15 December 2025. PAU’s published call states that late applications would not be considered. The African Union announcements index still identifies that call as the latest PAU scholarship announcement, and the PAU homepage now features successful-student notices and recruitment for academic staff rather than a new student scholarship call. No later student call or next-cycle deadline is published in the official PAU or African Union material checked for this update. The existence of an application portal or general admissions information is not evidence that applications are open.

PAU remains an active university network and its scholarship programme has not been announced as discontinued. The 2026-2027 intake has moved into admissions and student activity, while the next student application round remains unannounced. Treat this page as an archive and preparation guide, not as an open application notice.

Pan African University Scholarships at a Glance

Correcting the age limits, because this is where most people get it wrong

The age limits in the 2026-2027 call are 25 years for male and 28 years for female master’s applicants, and 28 years for male and 30 years for female PhD applicants. PAU’s later Senate news item says these same limits were approved for the next call. The next application notice has not been published, so applicants should still verify the requirements in its eventual call document before applying.

Older PAU institute pages may still show higher age limits for individual programmes. They should not override the central scholarship call: age rules can differ by cycle and by special initiative. A separate special call for refugees and internally displaced people used different limits and is not the general scholarship route. Check the call that corresponds to the application you intend to make.

If you are outside the age band for the general call, do not build an application around an argument for an exception. Read whichever call is live at the time and take its numbers literally.

What the money actually covers

The PAU scholarships page states plainly that “the PAU offers full scholarships (covering tuition and living expenses) for all successful applicants in all its institutes,” and that “each PAU institute will ensure that students’ medical insurance is covered from disbursed stipends.”

Read that carefully. Tuition is paid. There is a stipend for living expenses. Your health insurance comes out of that stipend rather than being a separate line item on top of it. PAU’s published scholarship terms do not itemise an international airfare, so treat travel to and from your host country as something to confirm in writing with your institute after selection rather than something to assume. Plenty of guides to this scholarship assert that flights are covered; the official terms currently on pau-au.africa do not say so.

There is also an obligation attached, and it is not decorative. Scholarship holders commit to “serve any African Union Member State for a period equal to at least the duration of the scholarship after the successful completion of their studies.” A two-year master’s carries a two-year service expectation. Students are additionally barred from taking paid work that interferes with their studies without approval from the PAU Rectorate. If your plan is to finish and immediately move to a job outside the continent, this is the wrong funder for you.

The institutes and what the last call covered

PAU is a network hosted inside African universities, not a single campus. The 2026-2027 call lists four institutes, but it explicitly says PAUSTI will not admit new students in 2026. The three other institutes list programmes for this call:

• PAUSTI — Institute for Basic Sciences, Technology and Innovation, at Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, Kenya. Although the call names PAUSTI as part of the network, its programme table says it will not admit new students in 2026; do not treat it as an available destination in this round.
• PAULESI — Institute for Life and Earth Sciences, including Health and Agriculture, at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria.
• PAUGHSS — Institute for Governance, Humanities and Social Sciences, at the University of Yaoundé II and the University of Buea, Cameroon.
• PAUWES — Institute for Water and Energy Sciences, including Climate Change, at the University of Tlemcen, Algeria.

The live programme list is set by each call; a general institute page cannot confirm that a course will take scholarship students in a particular cycle. The PAU homepage also currently lists the Pan African University Institute for Space Sciences (PAUSS) in South Africa. It was not among the four institutes named in the 2026-2027 scholarship notice. Whether PAUSS or any other institute participates in a future scholarship call must be checked in that call.

So the programme you want may not be recruiting in the cycle you are ready for. Check the actual call document rather than the general programme pages.

What happened after the 2026-2027 call

The PAU notice and African Union announcement record the call’s opening on 15 November 2025 and closing on 15 December 2025. They specify that applications received after the deadline would not be considered. That remains the last student deadline currently published by the programme. Do not treat the staff recruitment notice on the PAU homepage as a replacement student scholarship call.

PAU’s homepage publishes an admitted-student notice for PAULESI and PAUGHSS for the 2026 academic year. The institute pages also show student activity for the new cohort. Those notices corroborate that the last call proceeded through selection; they are not invitations for new applicants. The homepage’s separate short-term and part-time academic positions notice is for staff recruitment in the 2026/2027 academic session and has a different audience.

The public notices demonstrate why applicants should follow both the central university and their chosen institute. The central call establishes the submission deadline and common scholarship rules; institute communications publish programme-specific results and student updates. If you applied in the closed round, use direct institute communications for your own result or admission questions. If you did not apply, wait for an official student call before attempting a submission.

For scale, the 2026-2027 call reported that PAU had issued 2,549 certificates since 2014, including 856 to women and 1,693 to men from 50 member states.

What to do between now and the next call

The gap between calls is useful preparation time. The previous call allowed about a month between its stated opening and closing dates, so basic document gathering and referee coordination are best completed before a new notice appears.

Confirm you are inside the age band. Do this first. It takes one minute and it determines whether the rest is worth doing.

Get certified copies of your certificates and transcripts. Note that the master’s requirements ask for transcripts from both university and high school. Registrar offices are slow, and this is the step most likely to make you miss a deadline you can see coming.

Line up your referees now. The master’s route requires a recommendation letter from one of your former university lecturers, plus the names of three reference university lecturers with email addresses and WhatsApp numbers — and the call marks those three names as mandatory. The PhD route requires recommendation letters from two professors plus the same three reference contacts. Tracking down lecturers you last spoke to years ago is a multi-week job.

PhD applicants: draft the concept note. The call asks for three to four pages covering a tentative title, research questions, objectives, and the significance of the research. Write it while you have time to get it read and criticised, not in the last week.

Prepare for an exam. The call states that candidates “may be required to undergo a written/oral examination after pre-selection.” This is not a paper-only process.

Watch the official sources. Use current PAU news and the African Union announcements index to identify a new student notice. The online portal named in the last call is https://www.au-pau.org/submission/, but the portal’s existence does not mean a new call is open. PAU has not promised a date for the next round; do not infer a deadline from the timing of an earlier cycle.

Required documents, from the official call

For master’s applicants: an undergraduate degree from a recognised university with at least a second-class upper division or equivalent in a relevant field; certified true copies of relevant certificates and transcripts from university and high school; passport or national ID card personal details page; a clear coloured passport-size photograph, 2cm x 2cm; a detailed CV; a recommendation letter from one former university lecturer; and the names of three reference university lecturers with email addresses and WhatsApp numbers.

For PhD applicants: a master’s degree in a relevant field from PAU or any internationally recognised university; certified copies of relevant certificates and transcripts; passport or national ID card biometric or personal details page; the same 2cm x 2cm photograph; a detailed CV; recommendation letters from two professors; a three-to-four-page research concept note; and the names of three reference university lecturers with email and WhatsApp contacts.

Applicants to the Conference Interpreting and Translation programmes need excellent knowledge of at least two of the African Union’s official languages — Arabic, English, French, Portuguese, Kiswahili and Spanish — with academic competence evidenced in bachelor’s-level transcripts.

Writing an application that survives the shortlist

The call describes who PAU is looking for: “youths with potential and motivation who desire to play transformative leadership roles as academics, professionals, industrialists, innovators, and entrepreneurs.” That is a specific brief, and it should shape your CV and any motivation material you submit.

Be concrete about the problem you want to work on. “I want to work on climate change in Africa” tells a panel nothing. “I want to study household adaptation to recurrent flooding in informal settlements, with a focus on low-cost early warning” tells them what you would actually do with a place at PAUWES.

Match yourself to a real programme in the next call. Naming a specialisation that the new notice actually lists, at an institute that is recruiting in that cycle, signals that you read the document. PAU’s institute network and course catalogue do not guarantee that every programme will recruit scholarship students each year.

Brief your referees properly. Send them your CV, the programme description, and three or four points you would like them to speak to. A specific letter from the lecturer who supervised your final-year project beats a vague one from a famous name.

Scan documents like a professional. Certified copies, single PDFs per document, sensible filenames. Phone photos of half-cut transcripts read as carelessness before anyone assesses your grades.

Make the service commitment credible. You are signing up to work in an AU Member State for at least as long as your scholarship lasted. Describe the sector and the kind of role you are aiming at — a ministry, a regional power pool, a national agricultural research institute — rather than promising to transform the continent.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the scholarship open right now? No. The 2026-2027 call closed on 15 December 2025. PAU later published admitted-student information for PAULESI and PAUGHSS, and no newer student scholarship call appears in the PAU or African Union announcements checked for this update.

Has the program been cancelled? No discontinuation announcement was found. PAU continues to publish university and institute news, but its current 2026/2027 academic-position notice recruits staff, not scholarship students. The student scholarship scheme is between calls based on the official notices checked here.

Do I study in my own country? Usually not. The 2026-2027 call’s listed institutes are hosted in Kenya, Nigeria, Cameroon and Algeria, and many applicants would study outside their country of origin. PAU’s current homepage also lists PAUSS in South Africa, but that institute was not named in that scholarship call. The location and participating institutes for a future round depend on its published notice.

Can I apply for a master’s and a PhD at once? You apply at the level your current qualification supports. The requirements for the two are separate, and the PhD route additionally needs a concept note and two professorial references.

Are flights paid for? The published scholarship terms cover tuition and living expenses and specify that medical insurance comes out of the stipend. They do not itemise international travel. Confirm this with your institute in writing rather than budgeting on the assumption.

Can I work while studying? Only with approval. Income-generating activity must be cleared by the PAU Rectorate and only if it does not interfere with your academic programme.

Where do results appear? Per institute. PAULESI and PAUGHSS published their 2026 admitted-student lists separately, and both were linked from the PAU homepage.

How to Apply When the Next Call Opens

1. Watch the PAU homepage and AU announcements index. Look for a new student scholarship notice with an academic year, opening and closing details, and an official call document. Old admissions text or a staff notice is not proof of an open scholarship round.
2. Download the call PDF and read it end to end. It names the exact institutes admitting that year, the exact programmes, the age limits, the documents, and the closing date. Everything else, including this page, is commentary.
3. Register at https://www.au-pau.org/submission/. Applications are submitted online only. Create the account early so you can see every field before you start writing.
4. Upload your prepared documents. If you used the closed period well, this is an afternoon rather than a month.
5. Submit well before the closing date. The call is explicit that late applications will not be considered, and the last cycle allowed only about a month between opening and closing.
6. Then follow your institute. Selection information may be posted at institute level. Follow the PAU instructions for results, admission, and enrolment rather than assuming every institute uses the same timeline.

Enquiries go to [email protected] or [email protected].

Official pages:

• 2026-2027 PAU scholarship call: PAU call notice hosted by the African Union
• African Union announcements: Education, Science, Technology and Innovation announcements
• PAU homepage: PAU official website
• Application portal: https://www.au-pau.org/submission/

Treat those as the source of truth. Use this page to get your documents, referees and concept note ready, so that when the next call appears you are submitting rather than starting.