Frequently Asked Questions

The Mastercard EdTech Fellowship is a structured growth programme designed to support post-revenue education technology ventures that are improving learning outcomes in Uganda. The Fellowship provides catalytic grant funding, expert mentorship, tailored advisory support, and access to strategic partners to help ventures scale sustainably and responsibly.

The Fellowship targets post-revenue EdTech ventures operating in Uganda or with a strong Uganda focus. Eligible solutions serve learners or educators across early childhood, primary, secondary, vocational, or teacher training segments. Women founders and women-led ventures are strongly encouraged to apply for next cohort.

Applicants must be post-revenue and at a growth stage. For nonprofit ventures, grant income is considered revenue. Ventures should demonstrate traction through active users, institutional partnerships, or paying customers and show readiness to scale.

The Fellowship supports scalable EdTech solutions that improve learning outcomes and are built for local contexts. Strong solutions are low-bandwidth or offline-capable, aligned with curriculum or skills development needs, and capable of reaching large numbers of learners annually.

Selected ventures receive catalytic, non-equity grant funding, structured mentorship and coaching, tailored business and impact advisory, and access to ecosystem partners including schools, government stakeholders, employers, and investors.

Each selected venture may receive a non-equity catalytic grant of up to USD 70,000, subject to performance milestones and programme requirements.

The Fellowship runs for approximately nine months and includes onboarding, diagnostics, intensive support, mentorship engagements, and a final showcase or pitching phase.

Participating ventures are expected to commit time to Fellowship activities, attend required sessions, engage actively with mentors, provide data for monitoring and evaluation, and demonstrate progress against agreed milestones.

The Fellowship prioritises gender inclusion and strongly encourages applications from women founders and women-led ventures. While open to all eligible EdTech ventures, the programme actively works to increase women's leadership and participation in the EdTech ecosystem.

No. The Fellowship is exclusively designed for post-revenue ventures with solutions already deployed in the market.

Current applications are under review.

The Fellowship is implemented by Hive Colab in partnership with key ecosystem stakeholders, with support from the Mastercard Foundation.

Applications must be submitted online through the official Fellowship application platform. Only applications submitted via the official link will be considered. Applications for this cohort are closed.