According to the latest Open Doors report from the Institute on International Education, from 2020 to 2021, the number of students from foreign nations studying in the United States decreased significantly due to the COIVD-19 pandemic. Three years ago there was a slight increase of 3.8 percent. In the 2022-23 academic year, the number of international students increased from 948,519 to 1,057,188, an increase of 11.5 percent. For the 2023-24 academic year, there were 1,126,690 foreign students at U.S. colleges and universities, a 6.6 percent increase from the previous year. For for the 2024-2025 academic year, there were 1,177,776 foreign students in U.S. higher education institutions, an increase of 4.5 percent from the previous year.
We note that these increases in foreign students occurred before the inauguration of President Trump in January 2025. It is widely expected that due to travel bans and visa restrictions that foreign student enrollments in the U.S. will decline significantly for the current academic year. An early report on enrollments for the 2025-26 academic year shows a one percent drop in international students and a 17 percent drop in new foreign students.
There were more than 65,385 students from sub-Saharan African nations at U.S. colleges and universities during the 2024-25 academic year. This was an increase of more than 15 percent after increases of 13 percent and 18 percent in the previous two years.
Among sub-Saharan African nations, Nigeria in 2024-25 sent the most students to American colleges and universities. That year, there were 21,847 Nigerians studying here, up 9.1 percent. In the 2013-14 academic year, there were just 7,921 Nigerian students at U.S. colleges and universities. Thus, over the past 11 years, there has been a 176 percent increase in Nigerian students at American universities. Nigerians made up more than one third of all students from sub-Saharan Africa who studied in the United States in the 2024-25 academic year.
In 2024-25, Ghana ranked second, sending 12,825 students to the United States, This was up more than 38 percent after a 45 percent increase a year ago and a 31.6 percent increase the previous year. Kenya ranked third. There were 5,337 students from Kenya at U.S. colleges and universities in the 2024-25 academic year, up 18,4 percent from the previous year.
Ethiopia sent nearly 3,400 students to study in the United States, an increase of more than 10 percent. South Africa sent nearly 3,000 students to U.S. colleges and universities. Zimbabwe was not far behind with 2,712 students in the United States, a whopping 42 percent increase from the previous year. Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, and Cote D’Ivoire each had more than 1,000 students studying in the United States. Malawi and Zambia both sent more than 500 students to study in the United States
All told, 51 nations from sub-Saharan Africa had college students studying in the U.S. during the 2024-25 academic year.
Undoubtedly, some of these students from sub-Saharan African nations such as South Africa and Zimbabwe are White, but there is no data to report on the racial or ethnic makeup of this group of African students at U.S. colleges and universities.
