The Netherlands Fellowship Programme (NFP) for Master

Eligibility Criteria

To be eligible you:

• must be a professional and national of, and working and living in one of the countries on the  NFP country list and/or MSP country list. The NFP countries have been classified into two categories (I and II). Category I countries are priority countries and will receive more fellowships.
• must have an employer’s statement that complies with this format. All information must be provided and all commitments that are included in the format must be endorsed in the statement.
• must not be employed by an organization that has its own means of staff-development. Organizations that are considered to have their own means for staff development are for example: 
  multinational corporations (e.g. Shell, Unilever, Microsoft), large national and/or a large commercial organisations, bilateral donor organisations (e.g. USAID, DFID, Danida, Sida, Dutch ministry of Foreign affairs, FinAid, AusAid, ADC, SwissAid), multilateral donor organisations, (e.g. a UN organisation, the World Bank, the IMF, Asian Development Bank, African Development Bank, IADB), international NGO’s (e.g. Oxfam, Plan, Care).
• must have an official and valid passport
• must not receive more than one fellowship for courses that take place at the same time
• must have an NFP government statement or MSP government statement that meets the requirements of the country in which the employer is established (see the overview of government statement if this is applicable for your country)

Offered Benefits

Full scholarship

Tuition fees and living costs

Application Process

Step 1: Apply for your IHS programme first
Before applying for an NFP/MSP fellowship, you need to be admitted to the programme of your choice first. You can apply for all the IHS programmes mentioned below through www.ihs.nl/application. The admission procedure takes about 4 weeks, so make sure you apply with IHS about 4 weeks before the NFP deadline. Please note that IHS is not part of the PhD module of the NFP.

Step 2: Apply for NFP/MSP
As soon as you have applied with the IHS programme of your choice however, start preparing your NFP application. You will need to upload a copy of a valid passport, employers endorsement, your government authority statement (if applicable) and three motivation statements, answering the following questions:

-What is the issue or problem you want to address in your country?
-How will this course enable you to address this issue?
-How will you address this issue with your position within your organization?

Please find more about the NFP/MSP registration instructions in this document. After you have received your admission letter you will receive a link through which you can apply for an NFP/MSP fellowship. Please note: we willl only send this link to admitted candidates from one of the Nuffic target countries (see below).  Please take the deadline of the programme of your choice into consideration.

Step 3: Selection

If your application is eligible it will be assessed by the Netherlands embassy on:

• the degree to which you fit into the target group of the programme
• how well you would be able to implement the newly-acquired knowledge in your daily work;
• to what extent the knowledge will contribute to the development of your home country. Your application will be assessed according to the four Dutch priority areas in development cooperation such as food security, safety and rule of law, water and sanitation, and sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) as well as an individual country focus an embassy may have set. Make sure to highlight relevant links of your position / employer to these areas to increase your chances of being selected for a fellowship.

Step 4: The outcome

You will be informed about the outcome of the selection by mail or email. If your application is successful, we will contact you by mail or email to make all necessary (logistical) arrangements.