Mandela Rhodes Foundation: Scholarship

The Mandela Rhodes Scholarship Programme offers educational opportunities to African citizens with scholastic and leadership potential to study at suitable tertiary institutions in South Africa.

This scholarship, combined with the Foundation's leadership-skills training, aims to create a network of principled future leaders, with the capacity and will to advance themselves and their countries.

The intention of the Mandela Rhodes Scholarship Programme is to give expression to the legacy of academic excellence, leadership skills, education, reconciliation and entrepreneurship.

Each year the Mandela Rhodes Foundation invites Monash South Africa to nominate students who would be eligible recipients of this scholarship.

In 2008, Mr Unnel-Teddy Ngoumandjoka, an Honours student in the Monash School of Information Technology, was awarded this prestigious scholarship.

In 2009, two students, Ms Pertunia Mpoza and Ms Pamella Motlhageng, were awarded the scholarships.  Ms Mpoza took up the Scholarship to undertake a Bachelor of Arts Honours programme in International Studies, at Monash South Africa in 2010 and Ms Motlhageng has deferred her scholarship to 2011.

Monash South Africa has nominated four students for consideration by the Mandela Rhodes Foundation in 2010.

Feedback from Ms Pertunia Mpoza

From the first day we met as a group of 2010 Mandela Rhodes Scholars wearing our t-shirts, I have been fortunate to be surrounded by gifted, vision-driven students from diverse parts of the continent and have been inspired to learn more and share more. Ordinary discussions seek to find solutions and humor is found in the smallest of things.

The Scholarship has afforded me opportunities to network and further implement community and social projects that I had planned, through the guidance and sharing of ideas with the Mandela Rhodes Foundation staff and fellow peers.

I feel blessed and grateful for this opportunity. From here on there is no excuse for not rising above any challenge. I feel empowered and, more than ever, equipped to lead and aspire to be the best I can be, and to use my skills and talents to improve the conditions in Africa.

The lesson drawn from the 2010 Mandela Rhodes Foundation excursions is that “the more I learn the more I realise how much I do not know!’ With that said, I embrace our very own Monash Motto, Ancora Imparo: I am still learning.

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