Egypt, South Sudan: It was On Thursday, 29th September 2022, early in the morning, when South Sudanese students under government scholarship for the academic year 2021-2022 conducted a peaceful strike at the South Sudan Embassy in Egypt, Cairo.
The strike comes after the students were surprised last Tuesday that the scholarship is no longer fully funded, as they said.
In July 2021, the Egyptian scholarship was posted at the Ministry of Higher education, science and technology’s main office in Konyokonyo -Juba.
The Ministry encouraged students to apply since the scholarship was said to be no longer partially funded like the previous years.
So, many students who were financially challenged saw this opportunity as the best option to pursue their further studies, and they applied after being assured of privileges, for instance; free accommodation, medical insurance, exemption from paying tuition and examination fees, monthly stipends, to and fro tickets (going and after studies).
Unfortunately, the minister of higher education, Changson Chang, failed to sign the agreement that grants all the above till 2nd June 2022.
Before then, students started applying, and in September, the nominated students were shortlisted and were asked to submit their original certificates to be forwarded to the Egyptian Ministry of Higher education for the completion of admissions into Egyptian Universities.
Then, the South Sudan Ministry of higher education in Juba told the students that if one was in a hurry, he or they might use his or her own money to cater for ticket and complete admission processes in Egypt.
Therefore, few students turned up early, more made it later, and some of them didn’t make it up to now.
To add salt to the wound, those who came late were denied joining their respective universities, and they were forced to suspend the whole academic year ( 2021-2022) until the new academic year due to start in October 2022.
As students were in Egypt, those who made it to universities were asked to pay monthly accommodation fees. Consequently, others infiltrated hostels illegally to live with their fellow admitted colleagues, while the majority were hustling day and night to make sure they ate, drank and slept in a rented apartment by themselves for almost five to seven months.
In March 2022, the students constituted seven members committee which conducted several meetings with the Embassy through the education attache’.
After numerous meetings, they continued assuring us that the scholarship was fully funded, but the problem was that the scholarship MOU was not signed but not later than June it would get signed. Luckily, the MOU was signed on 2nd June 2022 by Minister Changson Chang and his Egyptian counterpart in the presence of all their staff.
On the same day of the signing of the MOU, they were all informed through multiple social media outlets that the MOU was signed with immediate effect in October, according to the cultural attache. With such news, they were all delighted and waited patiently.
As they had been waiting all these months, on 27th September, they unfortunately just surprised us that the scholarship is no longer fully funded but partially funded.
As a result, we responded with a peaceful strike/demonstration, which led to the successful occupation of the Embassy this morning of 29th September.
Dear countrymen and women, we are living examples of Egypt-SSD scholarship. Hence we are advising the general public to be cautioned about any fully funded scholarship to Egypt, especially those whose results were released recently for the academic year 2022-2023.