We need to move beyond telling African students to be resilient and start addressing the systemic barriers that make resilience necessary in the first place.
Not because African international students aren’t excellent. Not because they aren’t talented. Not because they don’t have something to contribute.
They are constantly expected to prove they deserve access to opportunities others can pursue without overcoming the same barriers.
I work in international education. I spend my days helping African students apply to universities, secure scholarships, navigate funding, and pursue opportunities worldwide.
And right now, it is demoralising.
A student can earn admission to Oxford and secure a fully funded scholarship from one of the most elite scholarship organisations and still not make it to Oxford because they cannot get a visa.
I recently had a student in exactly this position. He had done everything right. Exceptional academic achievement. A place at one of the world’s best universities. A fully-funded scholarship.
Then came the visa refusal.
I read the refusal carefully, and I struggled to understand how the decision reflected the person I knew or the evidence he had presented.
Instead, I saw how things like nationality, age, marital status, and previous visa history can become part of a much larger equation.
And that is the part people outside Africa sometimes don’t understand.
The passport matters. Where you were born matters. Where you apply from matters. The currency you earn in matters.
Whether your country has reliable infrastructure matters. Whether you can afford another application fee matters. Whether you can get an appointment matters. Whether a visa officer believes you matters.
And sometimes, no matter how hard you work, no matter how excellent your application is, no matter how much you have achieved, you are still asked to prove yourself again. And again. And again.
I see this constantly. Students with offers from Harvard, Oxford, and other incredible institutions who cannot take up those opportunities because of visa barriers.
Students who have worked for years to build competitive profiles, only to have an exchange-rate crisis make the cost of studying abroad completely unaffordable.
Students navigating application systems, financial requirements, and immigration processes that were not designed with their realities in mind.
And I understand that countries have immigration policies. I understand that visa officers have difficult decisions to make. I understand that institutions have policies and risk assessments.
But we have to be honest about the consequences. Because when we talk about “access” in international education, I sometimes wonder:
access for whom?
What does global education mean if the people who have earned admission cannot physically get there?
What does global education mean if the people who have earned admission cannot physically get there?
What does diversity mean if we celebrate African students once they arrive but ignore the barriers preventing many of them from ever getting there?
And what happens to all the talent we never get to see?
I know this personally, too. There have been international education speaking opportunities I couldn’t attend because of visa challenges.
Opportunities I had earned.
Opportunities I was qualified for. Opportunities I simply could not take because of my passport. So yes, this is personal for me. It’s one of the reasons I continue to advocate for greater access, fairness, and opportunities for African students.
And after years of doing this work, I am honestly tired of pretending resilience is enough.
African students should not have to be extraordinary just to access ordinary opportunities. They should not have to overcome five additional barriers before they are even allowed to compete.
So what do we do about it? What responsibility do universities have? What responsibility do governments and immigration systems have? What role should international education organisations and industry leaders play?
How do we move beyond talking about “access” and actually address the barriers that determine who gets access?
And how do we build a global education system where someone’s potential, achievements and contribution matter more than the passport they happen to hold?
I don’t have all the answers. But I know we cannot keep calling international education “global” while access remains so uneven.
So I’m asking the people who have the power to change this: what are we actually going to do?
Universities: look beyond the application and understand the realities your international students are navigating.
Governments and immigration systems: build rigorous processes without becoming unnecessarily exclusionary.
Industry leaders: stop treating access as a marketing slogan and start measuring who is being left out.
And those of us working in international education: we have to advocate louder, share data, challenge systems, and keep bringing these stories to the table, even when they are uncomfortable.
Because the goal cannot simply be to help more African students apply.
The goal has to be to ensure that qualified African students can actually access, afford, and participate in the opportunities they have earned.
That is what meaningful access looks like to me.
And until we get there, I’m going to keep asking: access for whom?
