The number of undergraduate students in higher education institutions has grown from 59,771 in 2022 to 74,414 in 2024.

The Malawi Education Statistics Report for the 2023/24 fiscal year attributes the growth to higher education financing that the Higher Education Students’ Loans and Grants Board (HESLGB) provides to students in the form of tuition and upkeep loans.

“This rise is largely due to the financing that HESLGB provides which in the 2024/25 academic year supported 28,882 students and in the 2025/26-year plans to support 32,000 students from both public and private Higher Education Institutions,” reads the report.

HESLGB Executive Director, Prince Phwetekere said government is committed to the improved access to higher education evidenced in the increase in funding every financial year.

“For example, the loan fund this year has grown to K36 billion from 30.5 billion Kwacha in the 2024/25 financial year”. He said.

Phwetekere said, another key contributing factor is the continuous increase of upkeep loans which are offered to students in public HEIs which increased to K560 Thousand per annum in 2024 from K200,000 per annum before 2020. 

University of Malawi’s recent graduate in bachelor’s degree in social studies, Betrina Nakhoyo said, higher education once seemed like an impossible dream to her as her family could barely afford basic needs.

“My mother, a small-scale farmer, struggled to provide for me and my siblings with basic needs, how could she finance my higher education? I almost gave up my desire to pursue further education until HESLGB gave me tuition and upkeep loans,” she said.

Another loan beneficiary, Abel Chalataya says his circumstance changed when he lost his father, the only breadwinner for his family.

“I was in year two pursuing a bachelor’s degree in education Languages at Mzuzu University when my father died. Without anyone in sight to pay for my education, I just knew that it was the end of the road and proceeding with my higher education seemed out of reach. But HESLGB financed the rest of my education,” Said Chalataya.

HESLGB was established in 2015 to provide financing to students in higher education studying generic bachelor’s degree programmes in accredited HEI.