News

Via a collaboration with the Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology and Ashesi University in Ghana, the Center for African Studies via the Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program, is able to bring five Ashesi undergraduate innovators to UC Berkeley. The students include Abigail Efua Tetteh (Ghana), Judercio Nhauche (Mozambique), Mcebo Vincent Hlanze (Eswatini), Sandra Nettey (Ghana), and Styve Zeumo Lekane (Cameroon).

Hon. Patricie Uwase ('15, Civil and Environmental Engineering), Rwandan Minister of State for Infrastructure, provides insights on her journey at the Mastercard Foundations Scholars@10 Baobab Summit that took place in Kigali September 15th to 17th, 2022.

Are you a prospective master's student from Sub-Saharan Africa? Do you know someone who is? This year, we took part in the Berkeley Graduate Diversity Admissions Fair, October 17 – 21, 2022. Our session was on Tuesday, October 18 at 9:00 am PST (California time) / 4pm WAT / 7 pm EAT.

If you missed the session, you can view the video recording.

The tenth anniversary of the Scholars Program at UC Berkeley was one of several anniversaries featured in a back-to-school story, "No shortage of good news as fall semester 2022 begins at UC Berkeley" published by Berkeley Public Affairs. Scroll to near the end (85%) for the section on the Scholars Program. Alumni, such as Patricie Uwase, Vicentia Gyau and Abraham Martei Martey are featured.

Global Custodians Academy graduated it first class on 18 December 2021. The Academy was founded by two Scholar alums, Vicentia Gyau and Abraham Martey (Global Studies, 2019).

Jumba, a B2B construction technology platform launched in April 2022 and co-founded by UC Berkeley alum and Scholar ('15, City and Regional Planning) Kagure Wamunyu (CEO) and Miano Njoka (CTO) receives $1 million in pre-seed-funding.

Vivian Omondi, a Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program recipient in the Master of Information Management and Systems program and part of the graduating class of 2022 shares her story that got her to the stage.

"Giving back: Molly Nantongo (MSW '23) and Ntongo Skills4Peace" First-year MSW student Molly Nantongo was recently awarded a $10,000 Davis Projects for Peace grant for her project, Ntongo Skills4Peace. 

Article in the Chronicle (Zimbabwe), From Gwabalanda to world's top tech firms, Twitter, features Mastercard Foundation Scholar Eric Khumalo, '20, CogSci. See the Front page of the print version.

In this article, MEng student and scholarship recipient, Cecil Chikezie, speaks about what it means to be a Mastercard Foundation Scholar and his long term bio-engineering goals of supporting the financial stability and respiratory health of Kenyan communities.  Read the full Berkeley Master of Engineering article.  

Barbara Mensah had studied education, founded her own organization to empower rural girls, and worked at a university in Ghana. But wanting to take the next step in her education and career, she had applied and been accepted to UC Berkeley’s first cohort of the brand-new Master of Development Engineering (M.DevEng) program, housed at the Blum Center.

Urban economies in growing cities, such as Nairobi, rely partly on the contribution of tradespeople like plumbers, electricians, and painters. Many live in informal, low-income settlements, far from the rest of the city's economy, giving rise to an opportunity mismatch for customers interested in hiring these talented artisans. Sarah Lebu, and two other Mastercard Foundation Scholars Kwinoja Kapiteni (Tanzania) and Chidi Uwaeme (Nigeria) formed KaziTu to fill this gap.

Mastercard Foundation Scholar Glora Tumushabe is featued in this article from UC Berkeley News.  

Abdoul Aziz grew up in Côte d’Ivoire in West Africa and moved to South Africa, where he received the Mastercard Foundation Scholarship to come to the US as an undergraduate at UC Berkeley. He was selected as a part of the 2019 GLBOE Ambassador Program. Let’s hear about Abdoul Aziz’s transformative experience traveling to Singapore and the Philippines with GLOBE.  Read the full GLOBE article.

This article feature 7 Mastercard Foundation Scholars: Nebiat Assefa Melles (’18), Carlos Mureithi (’19), Boikanyo Tefu (’20), Waringa Kamau (’17), Tawanda Kanhema (’14), Grace Oyenubi (’18), Alsanosi Adam (’16).  Read the full article from the Graduate School of Journalism.

First comes the honeymoon, then the culture shock, followed by an adjustment period and finally mastery. That’s the “U-Curve” trajectory typically experienced by international students, according to the Berkeley International Office.

The campus held a festive event Friday to honor six students from Sub-Saharan Africa earning master’s degrees this month. The group is the first graduating cohort from UC Berkeley’s partnership with The Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program.  Read the full Berkeley News article.

The Study on sub-Saharan African Alumni (PARIS) was officially launched during a two-day workshop held last December at UC Berkeley with participants from seven universities – University of Toronto, McGill, and Simon Frasier (Canada), Earth University (Costa Rica) and UC Berkeley, Stanford, and Arizona State University (USA).  Read the Graduate Division article on

At Zengeza 1 High School in Zimbabwe, students have long called two of their buildings the Harvard Campus. They named them in hopes that, at least every other year, someone from their impoverished but proud school of 2,500 students, all of them from families earning less than $300 a year, would be admitted to the Ivy League.  Read the full Berkeley News article.

Growing up in western Kenya, Lilian Kabelle had always dreamed of going to Berkeley—only 10,000 miles, an acceptance letter and the means stood in her way. Now, as a Mastercard Foundation Scholar, Kabelle is attending Berkeley at no cost as part of a $500 million education initiative to provide full scholarships for students in developing countries who exemplify a “give back” ethos.  Read the full article from the College of Engineering.