Africa-based international education agents are moving away from traditional study destinations in favour of recommending destinations in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Asia, buoyed by affordable fees and living costs as well as high study visa success rates.
Agents are sending students to universities in Germany, France, Ireland, and increasingly Türkiye, Cyprus, Hungary, Georgia, Poland, Malta in Eastern European countries, Dubai in the Middle East, and Malaysia and India in Asia, where besides affordability, visa success rate for students is high.
“Tuition fees are generally more affordable in emerging study destinations compared to universities in the ‘big four’ (USA, UK, Canada and Australia), and many of these destinations offer strong career prospects and stay-back opportunities,” said Shayne Premji, co-founder of African study abroad platform Craydel.
Some universities in emerging destinations charge tuition fees as low as USD$5,000 per year, and students only have to part with a similar or slightly higher amount in terms of living costs, making the destinations irresistible for education-hungry learners from middle and low income source countries in general.
Tuition fees are generally more affordable in emerging study destinations, compared to universities in the ‘big four’
Shayne Premji, Craydel
In many of these new destinations, Premji said his company was seeing a visa issuance success rate of 100%, a huge advantage to students from a continent used to rejection rates of up to 70% in some of the big four destinations.
On the other hand, tuition fees ranged from a low of around €4,000 a year in Poland to a high of about €6,000 in Hungary for top private universities at undergraduate level.
“Despite the enduring appeal of the big four for many students, recent shifts in their immigration policies, including reduced post-study work rights, international student quotas, and tougher visa regulations, combined with economic challenges in certain African markets, are prompting a growing number of African students to consider alternative study destinations,” Premji said.
In response, his company has launched international study abroad conferences across key African markets including Kenya, Uganda, Zimbabwe and Nigeria, to help students get exposure to these emerging destinations and compare them to universities at traditional study destinations, he told The PIE News.
At its inaugural conference in Nairobi, Kenya earlier this month, the company hosted universities from 15 countries including emerging destinations like Germany, Ireland, France, UAE, Türkiye, Hungary and Cyprus as well as from the big four. Universities were asked to pitch their destinations to students, with the students voting on the ultimate winner.
To the surprise of the organisers, students and parents present picked Cyprus, followed by Türkiye, as the best education destinations. “This serves as a small anecdote that these non-traditional destinations are gaining interest,” Premji noted.
According to Farouk Lalji of Koala Education Consultants in Nairobi and Study Options Africa Limited, an equally good destination is Ireland, where besides comparatively affordable fees, living costs, and top quality education, post-study opportunities beat those of other emerging destinations.
“While the new destinations of Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Asia have got fantastic universities, competitive fees and living costs, they do offer much in terms of post-study job and employment opportunities because these developing countries, and their citizens need every available job opportunity,” he told The PIE. English language is also not widely used in the countries making working there hard.
Ireland, he added, was a “great” destination worth exploring owing to the “extras” it offered including post-university working opportunities. Ireland being a member of the European Union also meant options of working in several EU countries after graduation.
In 2023, for example, there were at least 3,600 African students in Malaysia. There were 1,420 Nigerian students in the country, 1,310 from Sudan and 880 from Egypt, according to the ECF Monitor.
In 2023, students from 23 countries became eligible for the 12-month post-study Graduate Pass in Malaysia, but no African country was granted the privilege.
On the other hand, Türkiye, another major destination, hosted 61,000 African students as of January 2023 – marking a triple growth from the 19,000 studying there in 2019.
In Northern Cyprus, an important route to Europe for African migrants, out of around 50,000 foreign students enrolled there in 2022, 17,400 of them were from Nigeria alone, with the Democratic Republic of Congo being another significant contributor.
Thousands of African students transferred to Georgian universities in 2023, following the Russian invasion of Ukraine where no less than 20,000 African students were studying prior to the hostilities.
