The fellowships were granted by Poland’s foreign ministry and the National Agency for Academic Exchange (NAWA), public broadcaster Polish Radio’s IAR news agency reported on Friday.
The scholarship programme, named after Poland’s famous mathematician Stefan Banach, is designed “to promote the socioeconomic progress of developing countries by raising the level of knowledge and education of their citizens in the form of scholarships for second-degree studies in Polish or in English at Polish universities."
Scholarships are available at universities overseen by the Polish Ministry of Education and Science "in the field of engineering and technical sciences, agricultural sciences, exact sciences, and life sciences.”
Students from selected countries, such as Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine, can also pursue “second-degree studies in the fields of humanities and social sciences” under the Banach Scholarship Programme, officials said.
NAWA’s Deputy Director Zofia Sawicka told the IAR news agency that “in this year’s intake, the biggest number of fellows represent Nigeria, Ethiopia, Azerbaijan and Indonesia.”
She added that Polish master's degree courses in the technical and engineering sciences “are hugely renowned in Africa," prompting many African students to apply for the Banach Scholarship Programme.
“Just over a half of this year’s fellowships have been granted for studies in the technical and engineering sciences,” Sawicka said. “There are also scholarships in the social sciences, as well as many in the agricultural sciences, which are a popular specialisation in the developing countries.”
Apart from Nigeria, Ethiopia, Azerbaijan and Indonesia, there is also a strong representation of Palestinian scholars and those from Tanzania, Kenya, Belarus, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, officials told reporters.
The largest group of scholarship holders will study in Warsaw, the southwestern city of Wrocław, the southern city of Kraków and the western city of Poznań, NAWA said.
The most popular Polish universities include the University of Warsaw, the Warsaw University of Technology, the University of Wrocław, the Wrocław University of Technology, and the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, according to officials.
This year’s 443 scholarship recipients have been selected from a pool of 3,587 applicants, NAWA said.
(pm/gs)
Source: IAR, NAWA
