2025 South African Reserve Bank Scholarship for Data Science and Machine Learning

The SARB, as part of addressing the severe shortage of skills in South Africa, provides scholarships and bursaries to students in relevant fields of study who are from disadvantaged backgrounds.

In support of the corporate social initiatives of the SARB and its External Bursary Scheme, a number of external scholarships and bursaries are made available annually to qualifying prospective postgraduate students.

The SARB, in collaboration with the Data Science Academic Committee of the National Graduate Academy for Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (NGA(MaSS)), hereby invites prospective Master’s degree students to apply for competitive SARB bursaries in the fields of data science, machine learning and artificial intelligence, with specific reference to financial analytics.

• Table of Content
• About South African Reserve Bank
• Masters Scholarship
• Aim and Benefits of Masters Scholarship
• Masters Scholarship Courses
• Requirements for Masters Scholarship Qualification
• Application Deadline
• How to Apply

About South African Reserve Bank

The South African Reserve Bank was established in 1921 as a result of unusual financial and monetary conditions stemming from World War I (1914–1918). At the time, commercial banks issued banknotes to the public, which had to be backed by gold. But the price of gold in the United Kingdom rose and became higher than the gold price in South Africa. Therefore, a profit could be made by converting banknotes into gold in South Africa and selling the gold in London. This meant that commercial banks had to buy gold at a higher price in London (for re-import into South Africa to back their ba... continue reading

Masters Scholarship

Application Deadline	31 Oct 2025
Country to study	South Africa
School to study	North-West University, Sol Plaatje university, Stellenbosch University, University of Cape Town, University of Kwa-Zulu Natal, University of Limpopo, University of Pretoria, University of Venda, University of the Western Cape, University of the Witwatersrand
Type	Masters
Course to study	View courses
Sponsor	South African Reserve Bank
Gender	Men and Women

Aim and Benefits of Masters Scholarship

Full Tuition Coverage 

Masters Scholarship Courses

• Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence

Requirements for Masters Scholarship Qualification

For students to be considered for the scholarship, they must meet the following requirements:

• have provisional acceptance into one of the identified Master’s programmes;
• have selected modules that should include financial analytics topics;
• have a relevant Honours degree with an average of at least a 65% overall pass mark;
• be a full-time student;
• be a South African citizen; and
• be younger than 35 years of age.

As part of the acceptance criteria of the scholarship, students might be expected to attend specific workshops, as required by the SARB and the NGA(MaSS).

Application Deadline

October 31, 2025

How to Apply

For more details, visit South African Reserve Bank scholarship webpage