At the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) in September 2022, 8B Education Investments announced a $111.6 million initiative to finance African students in global universities.
With this initiative, under the commitment to Accelerate African Access to Global Innovation Ecosystems, 8B has brought together a number of like-minded strategic partners including:
- Nelnet Bank: $30 million to originate loans in support of 8B’s lending program that enables African students to pursue their studies in U.S universities.
- University of Health Sciences Antigua: $17 million to offer 50 percent tuition scholarships to 100 African medical students for the duration of their education.
- Canada-Africa Chamber of Business: $6 million to promote 4 press releases a year from 8B for media publicity
- The Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration: $1.35 million to conduct research on the diversity practices of U.S. universities, focusing on policy-related barriers that face African students.
- Institute for African Development at Cornell University: $0.9 million to organize an annual African higher education meeting to create bridges between African universities and US colleges.
- Education and Testing Services (ETS): $660,000 to provide fee vouchers to African students who are not able to pay the fees for GRE and TOEFL tests required by global universities.
- World Resources Institute (Africa): $600,000 to support paid internships for African graduate students in disciplines related to climate resilience.
- Miles College: $54,000 to fund 6 partial scholarships to African students in HBCUs.
The partnerships have a combined value of $111.6 million that will be deployed over the next three years. The partnerships will transform the lives of more than 1,400 future innovators from the African continent through affordable student financing and reach over 2 million African students in higher education.
8B’s CGI commitment will accelerate African access to global innovation ecosystems and promote diversity and inclusion in global universities and workplaces. It will also build a scalable market-based model for financing world-class human capital development in low-income countries.
As the first fintech solution focused on African students, 8B is committed to enabling African brilliance to have a global impact. We provide tools to enable African students to identify best-fit global universities and level up their applications, access affordable financing and connect with career support for job placement.
