Scholarships under the Stefan Banach Programme, a joint initiative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Education and Science, and the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange, have been awarded. The Programme is addressed to young people from developing countries who wish to take up studies in Poland.
This year, 260 applications from almost 30 countries were selected from among nearly 2,000 submissions. The largest groups of beneficiaries are representatives of Ethiopia (21 persons), Nigeria (20 persons), Ukraine (19 persons), and Azerbaijan (16 persons). Other scholarship holders come from Albania, Belarus, Brazil, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, and Vietnam, among others.
The universities most often chosen by the winning applicants are Warsaw University of Technology, the University of Warsaw, Wrocław University of Science and Technology, the University of Wrocław, and Jagiellonian University in Kraków. When it comes to the most popular fields of study, the majority of beneficiaries wish to study engineering and technical sciences, exact sciences, and natural sciences.
‘This scholarship is of great significance, because these fields of study are virtually strategic for the development of a modern country and its potential in the present times. In addition, the programme enables us to tighten cooperation with countries not only from our region, but also from Asia, Africa, or South America. Thanks to such initiatives, Poland again acts as a bridge between developing countries and the West,’ says Dr. Grażyna Żebrowska, Director General of the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange.
The Stefan Banach scholarship covers second-degree studies in Polish or English at Polish universities supervised by the Minister of Education and Science in the fields of engineering and technical sciences, agricultural sciences, and exact and natural sciences.
In addition, the citizens of selected countries – Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Montenegro, Moldova, North Macedonia, Serbia, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan – can take up second-degree studies in the fields of humanities and social sciences under the Programme, with the exception of philological studies in the field of the applicant’s native language.
Prof. Stefan Banach (1892–1945), after whom the Programme is named, is one of the world’s most famous Polish mathematicians. He was a co-founder of the Lvov School of Mathematics as well as of modern functional analysis – a branch of mathematics applied among others in describing natural phenomena.
Project co-financed within the framework of the Polish development cooperation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland.