The Namibia Students Financial Assistance Fund (NSFAF) says it has a N$400 million funding shortfall from the required N$2-billion budget.
The Fund received only N$1.6 billion for the fiscal year 2023, which can only accommodate half of the new awardees.
This comes after 22,178 or 74% of the 30,124 applications received were eligible for funding this year, a 30% increase over the previous year’s total of 23,696 applications.
“This is an increase of 30% when compared to 17,096 eligible applicants during the 2022 academic year. This leaves 7,946 or 26% of applicants ineligible for funding during the 2023 academic year,” NSFAF’s Acting CEO Kennedy Kandume said.
Kandume shared that the Fund is set to negotiate additional funding from the Ministries of Finance and Higher Education to add to the initial N$1.6 billion allocation.
“The Government through the Ministry of Higher Education, Technology and Innovation has allocated N$1.68 billion to cater for continuing as well as 2023 new intakes. Our calculations, however, revealed that this allocation is not enough, which prompted an engagement with the Line Ministry and Ministry of Finance, and both Ministries committed to [make available] avail additional funds to enable funding of all eligible applicants,” he said.
He added that “the continuing students alone account for over N$1.1 billion, leaving less than N$400 million for new awardees, so we must provide data to Treasury through the line ministry so they can see where they can get funds to allocate to NSFAF to meet the current budget of N$2 billion.”
NSFAF also announced that students are set to receive a monthly stipend with an annual maximum of N$17,000.
“The Fund envisaged to start with monthly payment to continuing students at the end of this month (April 2023, provided that their respective institutions have submitted their invoices.
“The monthly payment will continue until such a time that the allocated N$17,000 non-tuition fees is exhausted. Monthly payments for new intakes will commence as soon as the contracting process is concluded,” said the Acting CEO.
Ministry of Higher Education, Technology, and Innovation’s Deputy Executive Director Raimo Naanda stated that with economic expansion comes a higher demand for tertiary education, thus there cannot be a budget set in stone for education.
“We cannot put a cap to funding education, what we need to do is for old beneficiaries to pay their loans so that the fund increases its capacity to cater for more students as they increase overtime,” he said.
