What Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarships actually covers.
The Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarships (Vanier CGS) are highly prestigious PhD scholarships funded by the Government of Canada, open to both Canadian citizens and international students — including Africans — who are studying or intend to study at an eligible Canadian university. The scholarship provides C$50,000 per year for up to three years of doctoral study, supporting world-class doctoral students who demonstrate both academic excellence and leadership ability in the natural sciences and/or engineering, health sciences, and social sciences and/or humanities. Recipients are expected to become leaders in their respective fields. The Vanier CGS is administered by Canada's three federal research funding agencies: the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). African students who are pursuing or have been accepted to a PhD programme at an eligible Canadian university are strongly encouraged to apply through their institution. Canada offers a welcoming, multicultural environment and world-class universities — an ideal destination for African doctoral students.
Who can apply.
Open to phd applicants seeking to study in Canada. Eligible nationalities are listed below.
46 more eligible countries — full list available on the official application page.
Every academic discipline is accepted.
This programme does not restrict by field. Research proposals across humanities, sciences, engineering, agriculture, and medicine are all accepted.
Four steps to a complete application.
Scholar Africa is a discovery and tracking platform — the application itself is submitted directly through the official provider site. The steps below mirror our HowTo schema.
Check eligibility
Confirm your nationality, academic level, and field of study match the criteria above.
Eligibility checklist
Prepare documents
Transcripts, recommendation letters, personal statement, and a valid passport.
Document checklist
Submit the application
Submit before November 1, 2026 via the official portal.
Submission checklist
Track your application
Use your Scholar Africa dashboard to monitor status and deadline reminders.
Post-submission checklist
What we checked, when we checked it.
Scholar Africa runs a link-liveness check on every listing before it goes live. Five additional checks (contact, organisation, winners, third-party, manual review) are on the roadmap. Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarships currently scores 4.0/10.
Verification details Click to expand
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Other scholarships worth a parallel application.
Same eligibility window or destination. Many strong applicants apply to three or four programmes per cycle.