Nigeria leads Kenya and Ghana with highest number of international students in the U.S.

Millions of Africans apply to schools in the USA every year to further their studies. Whether it likes to be admitted or not, it is almost every Africans dream to start a degree or finish with a PhD from a top university in the USA.

Perhaps the reason for this are the advantages that come with having a foreign school on your Curriculum vitae (CV) when applying for that dream job. These foreign schools have also presented themselves in more appealing ways to attract and convince many Africans to ditch the schools in their own countries for them.

We may not be right on these presumptions, but one thing that is definitely accurate is that higher education can be brutally expensive all over the world and Africa is no exception. However, unlike the western world, many African countries do not offer scholarships to deserving students to help ease the financial burden.

Over the years, the number of Africans applying for scholarships has increased tremendously. According to the 2018 Open Doors Report, the USA alone has hosted 1.09 million international students during the 2017/2018 academic year.

From Asia, China leads with the highest number of students while Sub Saharan Africa takes the lead for Africa with 39,479 students in the USA putting the percentage rise to 4.6 per cent.

The report shows that 38 per cent of African students in the USA are undergraduates while 45 percent and 42 per cent of them are graduates and doctoral students respectively. The most popular cities with African students are in New York, Michigan, California and Ohio and Texas with one out of three of them in California, New York or Texas.

Ranked 13 globally, Nigeria leads the continent with 12,693 students in the U.S. Out of these, 5,887 are in undergraduate programs, 4,762 in graduate programs, and the rest in OPT and non-degree programs.

Kenya comes in second with 3,322 students and Ghana follows closely behind with 3213 students.

In the reverse, many American students also choose Africa as their destination for education, with South Africa, Ghana and Tanzania as the most popular countries.