18 June 2025
The Ikusasa Student Financial Aid Programme Foundation (ISFAP) wishes to commend the 1472 graduates who have obtained university degrees in occupations in high demand through its bursary scheme, since its inception in 2017. Since its establishment, ISFAP has allocated more than R2 billion to funding students from poor and missing middle backgrounds, with a substantial amount of which being dedicated to psycho-social assistance, or âwraparound supportâ, for its enrolled students. Engineering, Accounting, and Medicine were the fields with the highest number of graduates, with 361, 351, and 312 graduates respectively. âItâs taken a lot of commitment to get to this point; students, funders, and of course the
team at ISFAP have made significant investments to get to here. Weâve effectively supported close to 1 500 young people to empower themselves and support their families, while making a meaningful contribution to society,â said Werner Abrahams, CEO of ISFAP. âWhile we are pleased with our progress, we know that there are many more deserving young South Africans who want to become educated and empowered to build a life of value for themselves and their community,â he said. âOur vision and mission is to support as many deserving young South Africans on this journey as we possibly can,â he added.
The team at ISFAP is aware that there is great room to collaborate with other players in the higher education sector and has issued a call, especially to private sector companies as well as other bursary funds, to collaborate and work together to support poor and missing middle students who want to pursue tertiary qualifications in occupations in high demand. âWe hope to see more investment into the holistic funding and support of our students. Building up to this point has been uniquely challenging in some respects. This is because our model requires a greater investment to be made per student on average because of the intensive support that we offer; however, our results speak for themselves,â Abrahams added. In addition to the students that we have supported over the years, ISFAP is pleased to have a progression rate as high as 100% for faculties such as Medicine, indicating that our comprehensive support is important for student success. âAs we work to capacitate more young South Africans to become skilled contributors to society, we also wish to invite businesses and other bodies to continue to partner with us in making this critical investment into the education of deserving young South Africans,â Abrahams concluded.
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Media enquiries:
Anneke Burns
ISFAP Publicist
Email: media@isfap.org.za
Phone: +27 71 423 0079
About ISFAP:
The Ikusasa Student Financial Aid Programme Foundation NPC (ISFAP) is a non profit organization dedicated to funding and supporting the higher education of South Africaâs missing middle students. Established in 2017, ISFAP partners with various universities and private sector entities to ensure that students in need can access and succeed in higher education, contributing to the nationâs economic development.
For more information about ISFAP, please visit www.isfap.org.za