On African university students in Poland. A response

Catholic University of Lublin. Photo: MarcinOlszewski / Shutterstock

As someone who has lived in Poland, studied and taught in the country for a number of decades now, I was quite interested in Ray Mwareya’s piece in the previous issue of New Eastern Europe (“How Poland stole UK universities’ lunch in Africa”, issue 6/2025, New Eastern Europe). African students are indeed noticeable on many campuses and more generally in university towns. I myself once taught an international seminar in which two African students participated: one from Nigeria, another from Tanzania. This made me more aware of the phenomenon that Mwareya presents. Further experiences and observations followed.

What I wish to discuss, however, is less based on my expertise in this question, which is minimal. Instead, my reflections have been inspired by these experiences and observations in the country, which I believe allow me to add something to the African journalist’s account from a rather Polish perspective. Among other matters, I wish to show to some degree why the “unlikely magnet” of Polish universities the author proves has been successful in drawing away African students from those in Western European countries has more going for it than mere “affordability”. I will attempt to enhance his claim of a certain kind of “opportunity” for Africans that he begins to describe.

Differences

During my MA seminar on intercultural communication, several years back and referenced above, one thing that was obvious right from the start was that a student from Nigeria and one from Tanzania represent two highly different national identities. Although that description is not quite accurate, since African countries are often post-colonial constructs that have yet to fully develop national communities, except in the notable case of Ethiopia, which possesses a national identity much older than that of most European countries. At a certain level this issue is becoming more noticeable for Poles. For one thing, it explains why a book like Dipo Faloyin’s Africa is Not a Country, which goes into detail on this question, has been translated into Polish.

Most Poles only have a slight idea of how Africans from different parts of the continent differ from each other, but on the streets it is noticeable that there are differences, sometimes even in physical appearance, sometimes rather cultural. But even these observations no doubt have aroused the curiosity of a fair number of Poles, thus creating a market for such a book as Faloyin’s, and so augmenting a slightly better-informed public.

Most Africans that one comes across in the Polish streets speak to Poles, and to each other, in English. Some of them can be heard speaking to each other in their national languages. Again that term is not quite right. To give a parallel example, there are a number of Indian restaurants in Lublin, the city where I live and taught at the state university before I retired. In one of these restaurants, one of the Indian waitresses informed me that when she talks with her coworker from the kitchen – also from India, but a different part – the only language that unites them is English. That is naturally the same with probably most Africans, whose “national” language is often postcolonial. Not too many countries on the continent have an African language for the entire country such as the Kenyans do, which is Swahili, and even so it is likely a second language for many citizens.

In Lublin, the Catholic university has an English mass on Sundays that is primarily conducted by African priests studying at universities in the city, and so it attracts quite a few of the lay Africans who are studying or perhaps working in the city. Many of the Africans if not the majority who are studying in Poland are Christians. I once spoke to a young man from Zimbabwe and he asked me where a church was. He mentioned he was a Protestant but was willing to attend mass at a Catholic church because he knew no alternative – this might be the case of some of those Africans who attend the English mass, but I was able to direct my African interlocutor to a Protestant church in the city, for which he was grateful.

Once I attended the mass when a Kenyan priest was conducting it. Obviously the hymns sung that accompanied the liturgy were primarily in English, but one was in Swahili. Many singing in the choir were also Africans, but not necessarily from Kenya, or even Eastern Africa. So they would have had to practice the hymn to a considerable degree. The few Poles attending the mass would not have noticed any slip ups. Kenya has a Catholic university where the priest likely started his studies before coming to Poland to advance them at the oldest Catholic university in the country. The Church in Nigeria does not have a Catholic university of its own. So one of the bishops who intended to establish such a university sent a number of his priests to study in Lublin to gain qualifications. Not all of them study – or studied – at the Catholic university. This is because the university that has been planned in their country is to have some courses of study not conducted there. I met with one of the Nigerian priests a couple of times and learned about the mission of the Nigerian priests. He was studying business at one of the other universities in the city: Lublin is a university town to no small degree.

Flourishing ranking

Besides what Mwareya notes in his piece, what is worth pointing out is that Africans coming to Poland meet a vibrant society, arguably even quite strongly so by European standards. Why is that? It has been noted that the unique role of Catholicism in the country includes ties not only with the culture of the nation, but at the societal level it also provides a framework – and, fortunately, this was largely true during much of the communist period – for the lives of ordinary people. At the same time, many of the key events in the lives of individuals are marked by religious ceremonies and have helped to ensure national identification and cultivate traditions. One might add this form of participation notably contributes to the high ranking of Poland in comparison to other European countries that were examined in a momentous longitudinal study published in 2025 and organized among others by Harvard University’s Human Flourishing Program. This study looked at human flourishing and took into account 22 nations, including several European countries from Spain to Sweden. It was determined that religion was a key factor in achieving the eponymous qualitative element.

As Paul Marshall writes in the online Providence Magazine in reference to this survey on human flourishing, “Despite frequent press reports about the negative effects of religion on human life … [the] survey reinforces the conclusion that serious religion generally correlates with human well-being.” And notably it was the United Kingdom, where so many Africans used to primarily study in Europe, that ranked at the bottom of the European nations in the survey.

Poland’s ranking is all the more significant in that it is held by a post-communist country. Significantly, communism denigrated the traditional family almost to the same extent as it did religion – states were officially atheist – since individuals segregated from the flourishing influence of marriage could be more easily manipulated. The British journalist Peter Hitchens witnessed how devastating this could be during his stay in early post-communist Russia, observing in Rage Against God (2010) that “in mile after mile of mass-produced housing you would be hard put to find a single family untouched by divorce.”

This demoralizing reality affected most of the countries of the Soviet bloc. Not much has likely changed in Russia at this point, which in part likely helps explain why its society seems to be fairly easily manipulated by Vladimir Putin. The radical decline of religion in so many European countries to no small degree explains a pervasive hyper-individualism. This is combined with a consumer society without higher values, which augments what could be labelled in line with John Vervaeke as a “meaning crisis”. This is likely a strong component of the comparatively low level of human flourishing the survey detected in significant nations: making them a poor model for post-communist countries, not to mention augmenting a terrible waste of stored human capital of earlier generations that European civilization generated. The Africans who decide to make their way to these countries after their higher education in Poland, as Mwareya notes, are headed to considerably less vibrant societies, at least for the present.

A gateway?

Although it is obvious that many Africans have work permits, I was happy to learn from Mwareya’s article that their university studies could actually be a gateway for those who wish to stay in the country – my university studies in Lublin were a similar gateway. And so Doug Siziba, the student from Zimbabwe who with his wife the author reports stayed in Poland after their studies, is quoted by him talking about the rapidly growing African population in the country: “there’s a big sense of Africa shaping up in Poland. I am proud to be a part of it.” Among other means of growth, this vibrant Africa includes online kitchens, Siziba informs the author.

Immigrants from a number of different countries have now been coming to Poland in significant numbers. Previously there was a large number of Asian immigrants. During the communist period, Vietnamese workers came to Poland on contracts that were meant to pay off loans drawn by their regime during the war against the Americans. Later in the post-communist period, many of them emigrated to Poland on account of fond memories here from that earlier experience.

That was just the beginning. The Vietnamese community here has now become among the largest from their nation in Europe. Not long after they started arriving, Vietnamese restaurants opened up throughout the country. And a number of Indian immigrants to Poland also shared their cuisine in a similar manner. As to Africans, in Lublin an Ethiopian café was opened, but unfortunately it folded after a couple of years. Yet perhaps these online African kitchens Siziba mentions will expand and help initiate a symbolic opening up of that Africa to Poles, also in part through restaurants. And in that way, it could be the start of a considerably larger beautiful relationship that for Poles goes beyond simply reading books like Africa is Not a Country.

Christopher Garbowski is professor emeritus at Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin, Poland.

academia, African students, Poland