Young people seeking scholarships, fellowships, internships or international programmes often face a challenge in finding the right fit, which typically involves scouring numerous websites, foundations, government portals, social media, newsletters and databases.
A persistent identity problem
A tech startup from Eswatini, HonwinOne, founded by Keith Honwin, aims to transform the way students find scholarships and opportunities. Instead of creating another scholarship directory, they’re building a digital platform called GYAP, which launched publicly in August 2026. The core feature is a ‘Digital Passport’ that links a user’s background, skills, and goals to relevant scholarships, fellowships, and internships.
HonwinOne’s vision for GYAP is ambitious. They want to go beyond simply listing opportunities and instead create a seamless process that connects discovery with eligibility, preparation, and long-term development.
The key question isn’t about GYAP’s current size, but whether it can tackle a common issue in African digital services: transforming scattered information into actionable steps for users.
Traditional opportunity platforms have already made scholarships and fellowships easier to discover. The unresolved problem begins after the link appears. A student may still need to determine whether nationality restrictions apply, whether a qualification is recognised, which documents are required, whether language testing is necessary, what “fully funded” actually includes and whether preparation needs to begin months before the formal deadline.
HonwinOne proposes a solution: a persistent user profile that eliminates the need for repetitive searches. They envision a cycle where users build a profile, receive context-aware matches, prepare for opportunities, take action, achieve goals, and then strengthen their profile for better future recommendations.
The Digital Passport is potentially the most important part of the model. If it works as intended, a young person would not need to repeatedly re-enter the same academic history, interests, qualifications, achievements and career goals every time they search for another programme. Instead, an evolving profile could provide the context for more relevant discovery and, eventually, help institutions identify candidates.
This also changes the potential business model. HonwinOne says it wants basic opportunity access to remain as open as possible rather than building a model dependent on charging disadvantaged students simply to discover opportunities. The commercial opportunity is therefore expected to sit largely on the institutional side: universities, foundations, employers, NGOs and youth programmes could eventually pay for programme infrastructure, candidate discovery, opportunity distribution, applicant management or institutional dashboards.
That creates the possibility of a two-sided platform — young people looking for pathways on one side and institutions looking for suitable participants on the other. It also creates a much harder commercial challenge than building a directory. Institutions must trust the data, users must continue returning after registration, opportunity information must remain accurate and the platform ultimately has to demonstrate outcomes that are more valuable than page views.
Honwin emphasizes the importance of a controlled pilot to understand user retention and platform usefulness, rather than focusing solely on registration numbers.
AI without creating another gatekeeper
Artificial intelligence is part of the GYAP proposition, but HonwinOne is deliberately cautious about presenting automation itself as the product. The company sees AI being used for information organisation, profile understanding, opportunity interpretation, matching, personalisation and decision support. That could eventually help users answer a question more useful than simply “What am I eligible for today?” — namely, “What do I need to build over the next six or twelve months to become a credible candidate?”
HonwinOne says AI should therefore support decisions rather than act as an admissions authority. Recommendations should be explainable, users should be able to correct profile information, official eligibility rules should remain authoritative, and uncertain or sensitive cases may still require human review.
“AI is useful only if it reduces confusion without creating a new opaque gatekeeper,” Honwin told AfricaBusiness.com.
The access problem does not disappear when the platform goes online
There is also a larger structural problem that no opportunity platform can solve through software alone. According to the International Telecommunication Union, 63.4% of people in Eswatini were using the internet in 2024, while LTE or WiMAX coverage reached 87% of the population. That is substantial digital reach, but it still leaves a meaningful part of the population outside regular internet use.
The labour-market context makes access to skills and opportunity particularly important. Eswatini’s 2025 Labour Force Survey, conducted by the Government of Eswatini with technical support from the International Labour Organization, put the national unemployment rate at 33.5%. Youth unemployment among people aged 15–24 stood at 26.8%.
A digital platform therefore risks being most useful to precisely the young people who already possess reliable connectivity, confidence handling online systems, strong language skills and access to academic support.
