Northern Region Takes Largest Share of this Year’s Student Loan Scheme

The Ministry of Education has released the list of government student loan beneficiaries for the academic year 2022/23 with Northern Region taking the highest share.

According to Minister Chrysostom Muyingo, a total of 625 students have been approved for this year’s funding from Higher Education Students’ Financing Board (HESFB).

This brings to 13,405 the total number of beneficiaries since the inception of the scheme in 2014.

Muyingo noted that the Northern Uganda region had dominated this year’s loan scheme award with up to 30% of the beneficiaries.

He noted that affirmative action which offers female students 7 points, ensured that 33% of the beneficiaries were females.

He asked for an equal number of ladies and gentlemen to benefit from the scheme in the coming years.

The Executive Director of the Board, Michael O. Wanyama (CPA), said that the journey for the selection of the Student Loan Beneficiaries for this academic year 2022/2023 started on 18th July with invitations of interested applicants to send in their applications.

He noted that they gave the applicants one month in which to apply. “However, we had to extend it to two months up to 15th October 2022 hoping that all the Universities and Other Tertiary Institutions would have completed the admission process and issued admission letters, which is a prerequisite for one to apply.”
He noted that they have continued to register many applicants who are continuing students and those doing ineligible humanity programmes.

“Out of the total 3,089 applications received, a total of 672 applications were ineligible leaving only 2,417 applications to be reviewed for selection. Of this, only 625 applicants were approved within the available resource envelope of UShs. 2.6 billion to support the first years. On average, we support only 25% of the applicants. The 75% of the applicants end up not joining Higher Learning Institutions (HLIs),” he said.