In Sub Saharan Africa (SSA) approximately 9 million students are enrolled in tertiary education (TE), which is only 4% of the total number of TE students enrolled globally. The barriers to higher education in SSA are numerous: poverty, gender, and disability, while the COVID-19 pandemic has further worsened the situation. In order to meet the SDGs, Africa will require a larger workforce of highly educated specialists, but unfortunately, is not on track to create these graduates and will remain reliant on foreign support, which is neither sustainable nor desirable. Currently, little is known about psychosocial factors and underlying mechanisms associated with youth’s intention to apply for university studies. Therefore, the overall aim of this research is to understand the technical, administrative, and psychosocial factors that relate to the application to TE among Malawian secondary school students. In a cross-sectional research study 821 face-to-face interviews were conducted with secondary school youth in rural and urban Blantyre. The study included a qualitative pre-study and a quantitative survey. To access determinants of intention and underlying factors of application for university studies the qualitative and quantitative questionnaire based on the RANAS approach was used. The Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale for Children (CES-DC) was used to assess mental health. Food security was assessed with the commonly used household hunger scale which has been validated in Malawi. Study results suggest that more than half of the youth assessed in our study were at risk to develop depressed (66.5%). Females reported experiencing more depression symptoms than males. Around 1 out of 5 interviewed youth lived in households experiencing moderate or severe hunger. The intention to apply for university studies was related to perceived vulnerability, affective beliefs (joy, happiness, excitement), injunctive (approval of important others) and personal norms, commitment to apply, and physical exercising practices. Factual knowledge related to how to apply to university studies was very low. The determinants of physical exercise included factual knowledge about advantages of physical exercising, affective beliefs (positive feelings), coping planning, remembering and commitment. The relationship between intention to apply and physical exercising was positive, but it was more positive among study participants with fewer symptoms of depression. Mental health moderated the effects of physical exercising on intention to apply for university studies. Experiencing hunger was negatively related to the intention apply for university studies. The results of the study will be used to develop and evaluate several low-cost, evidence-based behaviour change interventions aimed at increasing the application rate among secondary school youth in Malawi. Using econometric methods and a psychological theory of behaviour change, this will be the first comprehensive body of work to apply theories from social psychology to success indicators for higher education on the African continent, as a means of holistically addressing the deficit of skilled workers required for self-directed development.