Student Fund

About the fund

Nigerian universities train engineers, planners and researchers every year, and too little of their work is aimed at the streets they walk on. The Student Fund pays for fieldwork on the problems Nigerians live with. A final-year project on a Lagos footway is research on a live infrastructure problem, and we fund it as such.

Students take up a question from the research agenda in one of our focus areas, or propose their own within it. The work we expect to fund includes:

• Street surveys, recording footway width, kerb height, crossings and lighting along a route.
• Counts of people walking and cycling, by time of day and type of trip.
• Access studies, mapping the walk to bus rapid transit stops and the obstacles on it.
• Working cyclists, analysing how delivery riders and others who cycle for a living use the street network.
• Policy and budget reviews, tracing what the rules and budgets say about a street and what was built.

How grants work

Grants are paid directly to the student, with a letter from a named supervisor, and are awarded against a costed budget for the fieldwork.

Projects of particular promise may receive further funding to continue, and a Student Fund project may form the basis of a Research Fund grant.

Who can apply

Final-year undergraduate, master’s and PhD students at participating university departments in the cities we work in, with a named supervisor who will support the project.

Grants are made through participating university departments. Methods and findings are published, and the students who did the work are credited.

Department interested in taking part, or a student with a question? Contact us.