The National Skills Fund, usually shortened to NSF, funds skills development in South Africa. It is a public entity under the Department of Higher Education and Training, and it funds training rather than paying student fees. That last point matters: the NSF is not NSFAS, and the two are constantly confused.
Official contact channels
- Telephone: 012 943 3101
- General email: [email protected]
- Compliments and complaints: [email protected]
- Head office: 178 Francis Baard Street, Pretoria Central, 0002
- Office hours: Monday to Friday, 08:00 to 16:30
If you are a student looking for help with university or college fees, this is the wrong organisation. That is NSFAS, the National Student Financial Aid Scheme, which is a separate body with its own application process. The NSF funds skills programmes and the providers who run them.
The fund publishes a dedicated complaints and compliments mailbox separate from general enquiries, which is the address to use if a funded programme or a provider has gone wrong.
Services and responsibilities
- Funding for skills development, allocated through funding windows rather than to individuals on demand
- Support for skills development providers delivering accredited training
- Funding applications, published with their own criteria and processes
- Work on improving the post-school education and training system
- Tender notices and procurement opportunities, published separately from funding
Read the funding application criteria before making contact. NSF funding flows through defined windows and programme categories, and an approach that does not match an open window cannot be considered however worthwhile the project.
Office and address information
- Head office: 178 Francis Baard Street, Pretoria Central, 0002
- Office hours Monday to Friday, 08:00 to 16:30, with no weekend service published
- The fund is a public entity accountable to the Department of Higher Education and Training
- It publishes annual reports, legislation, policies and strategies on its own site
Applications and escalation
- Funding and general enquiries: 012 943 3101 or [email protected]
- Complaints about the fund or a funded programme: [email protected]
- As a public entity, the NSF falls under the oversight of the Department of Higher Education and Training
- Accredited training quality is a matter for the relevant SETA and the Quality Council for Trades and Occupations
If your complaint is that a training provider took money and delivered nothing, raise it with the fund if the programme was NSF funded, and separately with the SETA or the QCTO that accredits the qualification. Those are different levers and both are worth pulling.
Sources
- National Skills Fund contact page, nsf.org.za, read 3 September 2026