Kuda SIWES Internship is taking applications for its 2026 SIWES Internship Program in Lagos. You apply through Workable, you need to be enrolled at a Nigerian tertiary institution and eligible for SIWES, and your course has to be relevant to whichever department they assign you to.
Two things the reposts are not telling you.
Kuda has published no closing date. Every aggregator carrying this listing has an “Application Deadline” heading with nothing underneath it, because there is nothing to put there.
And the listing says nothing about a stipend. Several blogs covering this role suggest Kuda pays its SIWES interns. The official posting does not mention money anywhere, so apply on the assumption that Kuda is not paying you.
Both of those matter, and I will come back to them properly.
Who Kuda is, and why the placement is worth having
Kuda is a digital bank built as a money app for Africans, offering transfers, budgeting tools and access to credit through your phone rather than a branch. The name comes from Shona, a language spoken in southern Africa, where kuda means love.
The part that matters for your SIWES: the company has raised over $90 million from institutional investors and runs offices in Nigeria, South Africa and the United Kingdom. That funding and that footprint tell you something useful about the placement. You will be sitting inside a company with actual product teams, actual compliance obligations and actual customers, rather than a two-room outfit that will sign your logbook and give you nothing to write in it.
Ask any final-year student who did their industrial training at a place that had no work for them. Six months of signing in, sitting down and going home is a real risk in Nigerian SIWES, and it wastes a year of your degree. A funded fintech operating across three countries is unlikely to have that problem.
What the role actually involves
Here is where I have to be straight with you about how thin the official description is.
Kuda’s listing says the SIWES Intern will support daily operations within the assigned department while gaining hands-on industry experience related to their field of study. The intern is expected to learn, assist with assigned tasks, and comply with company policies and SIWES requirements.
That is close to the entire role overview. There is no task list, no named team, no project description.
This is normal for SIWES postings and it is not a red flag. Companies running general intern intakes place students across whichever departments have capacity that cycle, so they write one posting broad enough to cover all of them. What it does mean is that you will not know your department until Kuda tells you, and the work will vary enormously depending on where you land.
Anyone publishing a detailed breakdown of your daily Kuda intern duties has invented it.
Requirements for the Kuda 2026 SIWES Internship
These come straight from the posting.
- Currently enrolled in a tertiary institution and eligible for SIWES
- Course of study relevant to the assigned department
- Basic computer skills, meaning Microsoft Word, Excel and email
- Willingness to learn and take initiative
- Good communication and interpersonal skills
- Professional attitude, punctuality and reliability
Read the second one carefully. Students underestimate it. SIWES itself is restricted to students in science, technology, engineering and related disciplines, so your school has already filtered you. If your course does not qualify, or does not lead where you want it to, a change of course is worth looking at before you go further. Kuda then applies a second filter, matching your course to a department. For a fintech that realistically means computer science, software engineering, information technology, data-related courses, accounting, economics, business administration, marketing and similar.
Nothing about the first requirement is decorative either. You have to be eligible for SIWES through your institution, with the paperwork to prove it. Kuda is offering a placement, and your school and the Industrial Training Fund still have to approve it.
Preferred skills, listed as optional
- Basic knowledge of tools or software related to the department
- Ability to work in a team environment
- Attention to detail and organizational skills
Kuda marks these optional and I would treat them as the tiebreaker. When a hundred students meet the basic requirements, the one who has actually opened Figma, or written a SQL query, or built something small in Python, is the one who gets a look. If you have anything like that, put it in your CV even if it was a class project.
Is there a stipend?
The honest answer is that Kuda has not said.
The company’s posting mentions no payment. Some sites covering this internship imply a stipend exists, and one of them lifted old Kuda recruitment copy about learning opportunities and company socials that was written for full-time roles rather than interns.
What you can rely on is separate from Kuda. The Industrial Training Fund pays SIWES students who complete the programme and submit their logbook, ITF forms and bank details. The amount is around fifteen thousand naira. Students routinely wait months for it, some wait years, and some never see it at all. Plan your transport and feeding on the assumption that it will arrive late.
Some host companies do pay their own monthly allowance on top, and those payments tend to actually arrive on schedule. Whether Kuda does is something to ask during your interview rather than something to assume from a blog.
Lagos transport is the practical issue here. If you live far from the office, work out what daily commuting will cost you across six months before you accept a placement that may be unpaid.
Is the role still open?
Worth checking before you spend an evening on your application.
This listing first appeared around May 2026. Job aggregators have been republishing it since, which is why you might have found it dated August. Kuda has not posted a closing date and has not marked the role filled, so as of today it appears live on Workable.
Open the Workable link before you do anything else. If the page loads with an application form, the role is live. If it shows as closed or the link is dead, everything below is academic and you should look elsewhere.
The SIWES paperwork you need sorted
This is the part students underestimate, and it quietly sinks placements. Getting Kuda to say yes is half of it. Your institution and the ITF run their own process alongside, and the two have to line up or your six months will not count towards anything.
Before you apply, collect these from your school’s SIWES unit:
- Your placement letter, which is the formal letter you submit to Kuda asking them to take you
- The Acceptance of SIWES form, which Kuda fills and returns to your school’s SIWES directorate confirming they have taken you
- Your SIWES logbook, usually issued with the SCAF form and ITF Form 8
Once Kuda accepts you, the clock starts. Submit your SCAF form to the nearest ITF office within your first two weeks. That is the Student Commencement of Attachment Form. It records where you are working and how to reach you, and the ITF uses it both for monitoring and for processing your stipend. Miss it and you can complete the entire six months and still have problems getting paid or credited.
Your logbook gets filled in daily and signed weekly by your Kuda supervisor. Do not leave it until the end. Supervisors leave companies, get busy or forget what you did in week three, and a logbook signed in one panicked sitting looks exactly like what it is.
At the end you will need ITF Form 8, the End of Programme Report Sheet, plus an employer evaluation form that your Kuda supervisor completes and that goes to your school rather than to the ITF. Most institutions also want a written report, and some run an oral defence on it.
Duration is typically six months for university students and four to six months for ND students, though your department sets the exact requirement. Confirm yours with your coordinator rather than assuming, because a placement that runs short of your school’s requirement may not count.
How to apply
The application runs entirely through Workable, at the link on Kuda’s posting. No email address, no WhatsApp group, no agent. Anyone asking you for money to secure a Kuda SIWES placement is defrauding you.
Set aside a proper hour for this.
Get your CV right first. One page, since you are a student and there is no honest way to fill two. Put your course, institution, expected graduation year and the fact that you are seeking a SIWES placement at the very top, because a recruiter sorting intern applications needs to confirm your eligibility in about four seconds. List any technical coursework, projects, or software you have actually used. A class project counts if you can talk about it.
Name your department preference if the form allows it. Kuda assigns you somewhere, and giving them a sensible answer based on your course makes the assignment easier for them and better for you.
Write something in the cover letter field. Most students leave it blank or paste a generic paragraph. Three or four honest sentences about why fintech, what you study and what you want to learn will put you ahead of most of the pile. Mention Kuda specifically. Recruiters can tell instantly when the same letter went to forty companies.
Check your email address works and looks professional. This sounds beneath mentioning until you see how many applications come from addresses students made in secondary school.
Apply early. Rolling intern intakes fill as suitable applications come in, and there is no deadline forcing Kuda to wait for yours.
What to expect if you get in
You will be placed in a department based on your course. What you get out of the six months depends heavily on which one, because a student sitting with an engineering or product team spends their days very differently from one in customer operations or finance.
Two habits separate the interns who get something out of SIWES from the ones who do not.
Ask for work. The single most common complaint from Nigerian SIWES students is having nothing to do, and it is frequently because nobody was assigned to manage them and they waited quietly to be noticed. Find your supervisor, tell them you have capacity, and ask what you can take off their plate.
Write things down as they happen. Your logbook is graded, and it is also the only record you will have when you sit in a job interview two years later trying to remember what you actually did. Specifics beat summaries. “Reconciled daily transaction reports for the operations team” tells a story. “Assisted with departmental duties” tells nobody anything.
There is a longer game here too. Companies hire from their intern pools because they have already watched you work for six months, which is better information than any interview produces. Turning up on time and finishing what you are given is most of it.
Questions students are asking
What is the deadline for the Kuda 2026 SIWES internship? Kuda has not published one. Check the Workable link to see whether applications are still open, and apply as soon as you can rather than waiting.
Does Kuda pay SIWES interns? The listing does not say. Assume no company payment and treat the ITF stipend of roughly fifteen thousand naira as separate and probably late. Ask about a company allowance if you reach an interview.
Where is the internship based? Lagos. Kuda runs offices in South Africa and the UK too, but this role is Lagos only.
What courses can apply? You need to be SIWES-eligible through your institution and studying something relevant to the department you get assigned to. For a fintech, that generally means computing, engineering, data, accounting, economics, business and marketing-related courses.
How long is the placement? Kuda has not stated a duration. Your school’s requirement governs it, which is usually six months for university students and four to six for ND students.
Do I need work experience? No. The requirements ask for basic computer skills, willingness to learn and professional conduct. This is an internship for students with no experience.
Can I apply if my school has not given me a placement letter yet? You can start the application, but you will need the letter and the acceptance form for the placement to count towards your SIWES. Start the school paperwork now, in parallel.
Where this information comes from
Everything above comes from Kuda Technologies’ own listing on Workable and from ITF and institutional SIWES documentation, including guidance published by university SIWES directorates. Where Kuda has not published something, this page says so rather than filling the gap.
Three claims circulating on other pages about this internship that I could not verify anywhere in Kuda’s posting. That there is a stipend. That there is a fixed application deadline. And that interns attend structured workshops or receive a defined training curriculum. Kuda may well do some of these. The company has not said so, and no page currently claiming otherwise cites a source.
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Apply here
The official application is on Workable, linked from Kuda’s careers listing for the 2026 SIWES Internship Program in Lagos.
Before you open it, do two things today. Email or visit your school’s SIWES coordinator and ask what you need to collect for your placement letter, because that process is slower than you think and it runs on the school’s timetable rather than yours. Then spend twenty minutes cutting your CV down to one page with your course and SIWES eligibility at the top.
Those two jobs are what stand between most students and a placement they would otherwise have got.
I am Jude Chinecherem, a final-year MBBS student at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. I know what it feels like to want an education your family cannot afford. When my parents could not pay for my schooling, I had to learn how to find scholarships and work the system out on my own, with nobody to guide me. I came out the other side, and now I share everything I learned so the next student does not have to figure it out alone. This is the advice I wish someone had given me back then.
