SANSA Postgraduate Bursaries 2025

Bursary Details

South Africa needs an increase in science and engineering graduates if we are to effectively resource the country with necessary and scarce skills to achieve goals of the National Development Plan and ensure a successful and sustainable future for our citizens.

SANSA provides post graduate degree bursaries to contribute to the national target for qualified post-graduates in science and engineering.

The main criteria used in the selection of successful applicants are financial need, academic potential and career-oriented study programmes.

We are currently revising the bursary values for 2024 and these will be communicated in due course.

Earth Observation (Hons, MSc, PhD)

• Remote Sensing
• Geospatial programming
• Earth system science with remote sensing
• Earth observations in ecosystems accounting
• Applications of remote sensing in environmental management including oceans and marine, agriculture and rangelands, water resource management, mineral resource and spatial planning

Engineering (MEng, MTech, MSc, PHD, DTech)

• Software  and software systems engineering
• Aeronautical, aerospace, mechanical, electrical, electronic, mechatronic and computer engineering
• Space, systems, antenna and RF engineering

Space Science (Hons, MSc, MPhil, PhD)

• Solar physics and space weather forecasting
• Antarctic radar studies of atmosphere gravity waves
• Multi-instrument studies of space weather
• Modelling geomagnetically induced in power systems
• Multi-scale ionospheric physics, structure and dynamics
• Ionospheric and radio propagation modelling
• Theory of waves and solutions in plasmas
• Atmospheric radiation studies
• Verification of space weather forecasting

All SANSA divisions (Hons, MSc, PHD)

• Computer science
• Information Systems
• Software and systems engineering
• Data Science
• Field of your choice related to key SANSA objectives

Candidate Requirements

You should upload all relevant documentation and take special note of those below:

• FULL academic record
  1. Fee statement for ALL study years
  2. Proof of any undergraduate bursaries/funding
  3. An application will only be considered if it has been completed properly and in full.
• Only application within the mandated STEM fields will be considered.
• Applicants with a minimum average of 65% for their last academic year or qualification will be considered, in conjunction with the previous point.
• SANSA projects can be found on https://research.sansa.org.za/ under Projects . All proposal submissions in the related study areas will be submitted, for consideration, to our bursary committees.
• SANSA welcomes any new projects that relates to our listed projects and encourage applicants to contact our researchers for advice and assistance with their proposals.
• Documents that accompany the application form must be certified and uploaded.
• SANSA or university testimonial forms must be completed by the supervisor and uploaded to the application form.
• Masters and doctoral bursars MUST reapply every year for continued funding.

Bursary Enquiries

All enquiries to be sent to grants [at] sansa.org.za (grants[at]sansa[dot]org[dot]za) and students [at] sans.org.za (students[at]sans[dot]org[dot]za)

Applicants may not hold a combination of bursaries that exceed these amounts. Should an applicant have another bursary of lessor amount, SANSA will consider providing a top-up amount to the student provided the student meets our External Bursary Policy criteria.

Support for continuing years is not guaranteed and will depend on satisfactory progress during the previous year.

Conditions of Bursary

The completed application must be submitted no later than 30 September 2023 if you want to be considered for a bursary for 2024.

Bursary Inclusion

We fund the individual programmes as follow:

• Hons – one-year R100 000 (excluding allowance to be determined on a case-to-case basis)
• Masters – two years R120 000 (all inclusive)
• PhD – three years R140 000 (all inclusive)