How Poland stole UK universities’ lunch in Africa

Copernicus monument in Warsaw Poland. Photo: photomaster / Shutterstock

Dramatic claims by Zimbabwe’s foreign minister in March that 10,000 students from her country are studying for degrees in Poland alone show a picture of how Central and Eastern European nations are gradually creaming away Africa’s academic talent from traditional tertiary schools in the United Kingdom and Western Europe.

“The UK is damn expensive; the Tories’ [Conservatives’] “hostile” immigration policy is intact in Labour’s time. I could be made to leave after graduation,” says Tanaka Garwe, a science student from Zimbabwe studying at the University of Information Technology and Management in Rzeszów, Poland.

The Zimbabwe minister’s figures might have been over the top as the respected Polish education magazine, Perspektywy, noted a record number of international students, surpassing 100,000 in 2023. Zimbabwe, a top sending country, had 3,600 students.  Still, that is a sizeable number, Garwe says.

A no brainer

When Garwe was applying to study outside of Zimbabwe in 2020, he checked the universities in England first, as any middle-class student from Zimbabwe often does. The cheapest he could find was Queen’s University Belfast for around 28,000 euros per year. With mandatory accommodation and living expenses that UK visa officers demand to see, the bill would double to nearly 46,000 euros.

“For that amount I can build a mini university, or better a clinic in Zimbabwe,” he laughs. He cross referenced with Polish universities and was able to find out that it was “just” 5,000 euros on average. “Deciding was a no brainer,” he says.

Most of the Zimbabwean students studying in Poland made private arrangements to finance their education and were not on any government scholarships, said Sheila Chikomo, the Zimbabwean deputy foreign affairs minister, to New Eastern Europe. Until the last decade, Zimbabwe and wider Africa’s English-speaking students wishing to study in Europe usually made the UK their first choice, adds Fiona Magaya, the education secretary of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions.  It was a choice laced with a deep post-colonial psyche, she says.

The UK was the dominant colonial power in the history of African nations. Most of the elite prime ministers, civil servants and captains of industry governing from Zimbabwe to South Africa, and from Kenya to Nigeria, have some UK-earned bachelors, masters or PhD degree, she adds.

“A UK master’s degree earned via distance education was always seen as more prestigious than a full time, on campus degree obtained, say in Hungary or Poland,” Magaya says.

As of early 2022, the latest date for which data is available from the Universities UK portal, there were still 58,000 African international students studying at UK universities. Nigeria was said to be the biggest sender of students to the UK. The pull of London, a city of global finance and an aviation hub, the once-booming UK graduate economy, and the liberal post-graduate work visa introduced by successive Labour governments, made the UK a priority, while Central and Eastern Europe was more of an afterthought for Africa’s academic talent, Magaya adds.

But the cart has been upturning gradually – with figures showing that the number of Nigerian students going to the UK has dramatically fallen by half in 2024. Not only the bitter taste of the immigration “hostile policy” lingered, but aggressive tuition fee hikes among the UK’s universities have taken a toll even for local families, says Joylean Sithole, a British trained nurse from Zimbabwe who is sending her eldest child east to Poland to study law.

All of it has been to Poland’s benefit, adds Doug Siziba, a part-time truck driver from Zimbabwe who is studying a masters in Warsaw. “Poland has become very attractive lately,” he says. “I work part time as a local truck driver and can afford an apartment for the equivalent of 600 euros. In London I would need two years of monthly savings just to afford half the tuition fee,” he says.  

Siziba has brought his wife along with him to Poland, and she now has a baby who was born in Poland. He sees himself establishing roots in Poland beyond his studies – and raising a family there because “the Polish economy is hiring so many African workers from truck drivers to Polish-educated African nurses. As soon as the baby is a year old, my wife is starting her senior care work diploma here in Poland because we want to live here and grow old here,” he says.

Quality education at a bargain price

Siziba also describes how he often receives calls from his friends studying in the UK who are worried of being pushed to leave after paying so much money as a student and graduating. As Nigel Farage’s Reform Party soars in the polls, the UK government recently announced plans to double the number of years needed for foreign workers and students to earn the status of Indefinite Leave to Remain (permanent residence) from the current five years to ten years.

“My friends in the UK with no permanent residence are enquiring about the prospects of building their careers here in Poland,” he says.

Though Poland is enacting tough laws for asylum seekers – the government has proactively introduced measures to retain the foreign talent that graduates from Polish universities. Graduates in Poland can apply for a nine-month permit to start a business or find a job. When economic opportunities are found, graduates can apply to stay longer and eventually get an EU “blue card”.

“It’s easy to get jobs here in hospitality, manufacturing, transport logistics – and stay forever in Poland,” says Siziba. Other Eastern European countries like Estonia, have even moved further – recently introducing 90-day tourism visa free agreements with African countries like South Africa.

Ultimately, the biggest pull factor drawing African students to Central and Eastern Europe, especially destinations like Poland, is the comparably “high” quality education, a “fairly easy” visa regime, and bargain tuition fees as low as 3,500 US dollars per year, says Sithole. She looks around her community in England and sees the impact of “high quality” Polish education. Polish skilled workers are highly respected across major European economies like Germany and the UK in dentistry, electrical engineering, midwifery, or construction. “Whenever I go to British hospitals, I am in awe of the professionalism and skill set of Polish trained doctors and nurses,” she says.  

Garwe, the biomedical sciences student from Zimbabwe, agrees and says, as a sweetener, Zimbabwean and African students going to study in Poland and other East European nations do not really need scholarships because they can pay the reasonable fees from their family savings. This is unlike “the UK where scholarship applications are fiercely coveted because paying out of pocket is really expensive”.

Win-win

Back home in Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, Everet Doda has been an education consultant for 15 years. Until the last ten years, students would throng booths at education fairs organized by the UK, Germany, or Irish universities. Her consultancy alone would place 100 students to the UK and Irish universities annually until 2015. Now, “something has changed big time,” she says talking of the pull of Central and Eastern Europe.

The booming education business in Zimbabwe is full of consultancies, registered and unregistered, sending students to Eastern Europe. “Poland, Czechia, and Estonia are in demand and we get about 20 inquiries about those destinations daily, from parents and students. Only ten parents per week ask me about British universities,” she says.

Poland and Eastern Europe are the new money-makers for educational consultancies shipping students from countries like Zimbabwe. For every Zimbabwean student that passes through Doda’s hands and is placed at a Polish university, the entire package and visa processing comes to around 500 US dollars. It is good business but also a win for poorer African countries because “high quality Polish-trained nurses, dentists and engineers who choose to return home are giving us innovative skills that our African universities can’t produce.”

African students are a vital component of the Polish job market, says Krystyna Grabowska, Poland’s general consul in charge of Zimbabwe. Poland is among the fastest growing countries in the EU, with a projection of 3.4 per cent GDP growth in the second quarter of this year. This provides African students studying in Poland a chance to enjoy the benefits of one of Europe’s “most dynamic economies at a very affordable cost”, she adds.

Ishmael Zulu, 65, is a father whose 35-year-old son is studying for a master’s degree in IT at Kraków’s AGH University of Science and Technology and working part time as a database programmer for a Polish supermarket chain. For him, Poland’s education “is the gift that keeps giving”. “We are old, jobless and have no pensions here in Zimbabwe – our son in Poland takes care of our medical bills and food budget – he sends 350 US dollars a month,” he adds.

Remittances to families in Zimbabwe from students studying and working in Europe are a key cog of the country’s economy, with the Zimbabwe central bank revealing that over one billion US dollars, a substantial increase from the same period in the previous year, flowed to Zimbabwe from its diaspora.

Backdoor

Still, other African students studying in Poland admit that for them Eastern Europe is a backdoor – a gradual path towards Germany, the UK or Western Europe, which is still viewed as wealthier and more desirable. Anele Mujumo, a social work student from Zimbabwe studying at the University of Silesia in Katowice says racist bigotry in Poland and Eastern Europe towards black people is “still slightly higher” because historically, much of Eastern Europe has not had significant populations of Africans staying in their countries.

“In the UK and France, I feel at home because they were our colonizers and the African diaspora is huge there,” she says. She doesn’t mince her words. She only chose Poland as a “cheaper bridge” because of two fiercely held goals, she says.

“First, I can graduate, work for a while here, get the coveted EU blue card – then settle for wealthier jobs easily in Germany, Sweden or Ireland. Second, I can graduate with a highly reputable, European social work degree in Poland, work here for just two years and then try the UK, where social workers are in demand. Poland makes Western Europe easier,” she says.

For Siziba, the truck driver-cum-student who has made up his mind to settle long term in Poland, the quickly expanding African population makes life easier. In his Polish city, there are now dozens of online kitchens doing African (Nigerian, Tanzanian, Somali, Congolese) dishes – and “there’s a big sense of Africa shaping up in Poland. I am proud to be a part of it.”

Ray Mwareya is a freelance journalist covering immigration issues. His pieces have been featured in the Telegraph, the Guardian, and Newsweek.