As individual who has lived in Poland, studied and taught in the country for a number of decades now, I was rather curious in Ray Mwareya’s part in the erstwhile issue of New east Europe (“How Poland stole UK universities’ lunch in Africa”, issue 6/2025, New east Europe). African students are indeed noticeable on many campuses and more mostly in university towns. I myself erstwhile taught an global seminar in which 2 African students participated: 1 from Nigeria, another from Tanzania. This made me more aware of the phenomenon that Mwareya presents. Further experiences and observations followed.
What I want to discuss, however, is little 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 let me to add something to the African journalist’s account from a alternatively Polish perspective. Among another matters, I want to show to any degree why the “unlikely magnet” of Polish universities the author proves has been successful in drawing distant African students from those in Western European countries has more going for it than specified “affordability”. I will effort 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, respective years back and referenced above, 1 thing that was apparent right from the start was that a student from Nigeria and 1 from Tanzania represent 2 highly different national identities. Although that description is not rather accurate, since African countries are frequently post-colonial constructs that have yet to full make national communities, but 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 1 thing, it explains why a book like Dipo Faloyin’s Africa is Not a Country, which goes into item on this question, has been translated into Polish.
Most Poles only have a slight thought of how Africans from different parts of the continent disagree from each other, but on the streets it is noticeable that there are differences, sometimes even in physical appearance, sometimes alternatively cultural. But even these observations no uncertainty have aroused the curiosity of a fair number of Poles, thus creating a marketplace for specified a book as Faloyin’s, and so augmenting a somewhat better-informed public.
Most Africans that 1 comes across in the Polish streets talk to Poles, and to each other, in English. any of them can be heard speaking to each another in their national languages. Again that word is not rather 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 1 of these restaurants, 1 of the Indian waitresses informed me that erstwhile she talks with her coworker from the kitchen – besides from India, but a different part – the only language that unites them is English. That is naturally the same with most likely most Africans, whose “national” language is frequently postcolonial. Not besides many countries on the continent have an African language for the full country specified 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 rather a fewer of the lay Africans who are studying or possibly working in the city. Many of the Africans if not the majority who are studying in Poland are Christians. I erstwhile 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 due to the fact that he knew no alternate – this might be the case of any 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 erstwhile a Kenyan priest was conducting it. evidently the hymns sung that accompanied the liturgy were primarily in English, but 1 was in Swahili. Many singing in the choir were besides Africans, but not necessarily from Kenya, or even east Africa. So they would have had to practice the hymn to a considerable degree. The fewer 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 1 of the bishops who intended to establish specified a university sent a number of his priests to survey in Lublin to gain qualifications. Not all of them survey – or studied – at the Catholic university. This is due to the fact that the university that has been planned in their country is to have any courses of survey not conducted there. I met with 1 of the Nigerian priests a couple of times and learned about the mission of the Nigerian priests. He was studying business at 1 of the another universities in the city: Lublin is simply a university town to no tiny 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 rather powerfully so by European standards. Why is that? It has been noted that the unique function of Catholicism in the country includes ties not only with the culture of the nation, but at the societal level it besides provides a framework – and, fortunately, this was mostly actual during much of the communist period – for the lives of average people. At the same time, many of the key events in the lives of individuals are marked by spiritual ceremonies and have helped to guarantee national recognition and cultivate traditions. 1 might add this form of participation notably contributes to the advanced ranking of Poland in comparison to another European countries that were examined in a momentous longitudinal survey published in 2025 and organized among others by Harvard University’s Human Flourishing Program. This survey looked at human flourishing and took into account 22 nations, including respective European countries from Spain to Sweden. It was determined that religion was a key origin in achieving the eponymous qualitative element.
As Paul Marshall writes in the online Providence Magazine in mention 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 mostly correlates with human well-being.” And notably it was the United Kingdom, where so many Africans utilized to primarily survey in Europe, that ranked at the bottom of the European nations in the survey.
Poland’s ranking is all the more crucial in that it is held by a post-communist country. Significantly, communism denigrated the conventional household almost to the same degree as it did religion – states were officially atheist – since individuals segregated from the flourishing influence of matrimony could be more easy manipulated. The British writer 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 household untouched by divorce.”
This demoralizing reality affected most of the countries of the russian bloc. Not much has likely changed in Russia at this point, which in part likely helps explain why its society seems to be reasonably easy manipulated by Vladimir Putin. The extremist decline of religion in so many European countries to no tiny 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 crucial nations: making them a mediocre 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 little vibrant societies, at least for the present.
A gateway?
Although it is apparent 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 want to stay in the country – my university studies in Lublin were a akin 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 increasing African population in the country: “there’s a large sense of Africa shaping up in Poland. I am arrogant to be a part of it.” Among another 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 crucial 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 government 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 besides shared their cuisine in a akin manner. As to Africans, in Lublin an Ethiopian café was opened, but unfortunately it folded after a couple of years. Yet possibly these online African kitchens Siziba mentions will grow and aid initiate a symbolic beginning up of that Africa to Poles, besides in part through restaurants. And in that way, it could be the start of a considerably larger beautiful relation that for Poles goes beyond simply reading books like Africa is Not a Country.
Christopher Garbowski is prof. emeritus at Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin, Poland.