What happens when you send Ugandan students to Germany?

Note: This post was crossposted from the Lauren Policy blog by the Forum team, with the author's permission. The author may not see or respond to comments on this post.

Most of this blog is about international migration, and particularly, the economics of international migration. I write about income gains, but more in the sense of “here is the headline result of a working paper” rather than personal stories. This post is an exception to that.

I joined Malengo for their annual retreat^[1] this year, and had a chance to speak to a number of young international migrants about their experience.

Malengo is an NGO facilitating international migration. It supports Ugandan and refugee students^[2] in obtaining a German university degree and then working in Germany.

When a student moves to Germany, their life prospects improve markedly. A Ugandan university graduate will be lucky to earn $5,000 a year; a German university graduate averages >$50,000 a year.

The mechanics of the Malengo program are as follows:

• Germany has many open-access universities, where if you have a high school diploma, you can enroll.
• German universities have no tuition fees (even for international students).
• However, most Ugandan students don’t have the money upfront to move to Germany. The average Ugandan makes about $1,000 a year; the flights to Germany alone would be cost-prohibitive.
• Malengo provides support in enrolling at a German university, flights to Germany, some language training,^[3] and a stipend for the first year’s living expenses.
• After the first year, students are expected to get a job and support themselves.
• After graduation, students repay Malengo a portion of their income. Specifically, once they earn >€27,000, they repay 14% of income (up to a maximum amount paid or maximum amount of time).^[4]

This structure is not dissimilar to how student loans work in England, where high-earning students cross-subsidize the lower-earning students. However, it fills an important market niche for international student migration.

Scholarships and loans are rather thin on the ground for the merely good, rather than the exceptional. If you are Malala Yousafzai, or indeed any young person who is admitted to Harvard for university, there are probably financial options available for you to attend.^[5] Malengo does not target these students.

Rather, it focuses on students that come from humble backgrounds that otherwise would not have access to university abroad. They come from families making, on average, $42 per person per month. For a family of six - not uncommon in Uganda^[6] - this would mean a household income of about $3,200 per year. Self-funding a degree abroad is simply not an option when your household makes $3,200 a year. Indeed, even attending university within Uganda is often financially difficult.

Most Malengo students will probably not become politicians, global leaders, or CEOs after they graduate;^[7] rather, they will go to solid white-collar jobs that make a good - but not exceptional - living. These are also the kind of jobs Germany is most likely to need to fill in the coming decades.

Like many European countries, Germany is aging and is likely to need many skilled migrants in the coming decades. There are only so many Malalas in the world, but BMW is going to continue to need quite a lot of engineers. Malengo students may fill some of these gaps - working good professional jobs, paying taxes, contributing to the German economy.

The program is intended to support international migration in a scalable - and hopefully not unpopular!^[8] - way.

How It’s Going

So far, the descriptive statistics look like the model is working. Of the ~250 Malengo scholars currently abroad, almost all are making progress towards their degree. 85% are actively employed, with average earnings of €880/month. This is already many times more than they would earn in Uganda.

So far, their grades are good but not amazing. Germany uses a 1-5 grading scale, where 1 is best. The average GPA is currently 2.37. A reasonable number will take more than the nominal time to graduate, because they switched majors or failed exams,^[9] but they are nonetheless on track to graduate eventually. Only two - of the 250 currently in Germany - have fully dropped out.^[10] 95% want to stay in Germany after graduation.

Of course, the ultimate goal is not how well they do in school, but how they do afterwards. Malengo has embedded an RCT into the program to compare the life outcomes of those who attend university in Germany to similar students who did not go to Germany.

The first cohort of Malengo scholars started in 2021. This means the first cohort is approaching graduation.^[11] We don’t yet know what kind of jobs they will get, and how successful Malengo will be - but the students I talked to made me feel hopeful.

Malengo Student Interviews

Here are just a few of the students I spoke to over the weekend:

Jasmine, 21, Uganda

Studying international business at Hochschule Anhalt in Bernburg

Starting her second year in Germany

You know when you meet someone and you can just tell they’re a leader? That’s how I felt meeting Jasmine. In her first year in Germany, she’s already started working in her university’s international students office, run for student council, and is the president of the Erasmus club.

She’s the daughter of a pastor and grew up in Entebbe, Uganda, on the shores of Lake Victoria. She has four siblings, so money was always tight growing up. She thinks she probably could have attended university in Uganda, but she wouldn’t have had nearly the opportunities she’s had in Germany.

To her, living in Germany is “a fairytale”. She especially loves the nature in Germany - how there’s a park in every city, and how you can just spend your evenings in the forest.^[12] She loves her university, where she says she now works with people from countries “she didn’t even know existed a year ago”.

It hasn’t always been easy - she misses her family and Ugandan food - but since moving to Germany, she’s found a community in both her university and her church. She now feels like she can aim for the skies. She says that the Malengo program has taught her that “I’m actually stronger than I thought I am”, and that you “can get through anything as long as you take it one step at a time”.

After graduation, she hopes to work for the UN or an NGO, supporting young people. For now, though, she’s trying to take advantage of every opportunity she gets.

Peter Ngoth Anyang, 23, South Sudan

Studying applied biology at Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg in Rheinbach, Germany

Starting his second year in Germany

Ngoth is originally from South Sudan, but South Sudan has had significant conflict much of its (short) existence. In the 14 years South Sudan has been a country, some one million South Sudanese have fled to Uganda. Ngoth’s family were among them.

He spent much of his adolescence in Uganda’s Kiryandongo Refugee Settlement. At the time he moved to Germany, he had been in Uganda for 10 years. He finished high school in 2022, but he didn’t have money to pursue a degree in Uganda. Most people pay for their tuition upfront, but Ngoth, being a refugee, didn’t have funds for this.

Without Malengo, he likely wouldn’t have been able to attend university at all, let alone study in Europe. He told me that “you can’t picture someone like me being [able to study] in Germany.” He is incredibly cognizant of how lucky he is - he told me that “there might be people better than me but they don’t have this chance. I’m here representing the whole community of people who have dreams.”

He hopes to become a genetic engineer. When he graduates, he hopes to spend some time in both South Sudan and Germany. South Sudan’s science community is quite small, and he thinks he could do a lot for his country with the quality of training he has received in Germany.

Joseph, 28, Uganda

Studying international taxation and law at Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences in Kleve, living in Düsseldorf

Starting his fourth year in Germany

Joseph has been supporting himself since he was 15, after his mother passed away. With some support from his grandmother, a friend and a part-time job, he was able to scrape together enough to attend university in Uganda.

He was in his third year of law school^[13] when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. He didn’t have enough money to continue, and so he dropped out, left the city where he was studying, and took up farming. At the time, he was living with an uncle and his cousins. It wasn’t much of a living; when I asked him what he would be doing if he hadn’t found Malengo, he said “surviving”. He thinks it is unlikely he would have ever finished his degree. If he had miraculously managed to make it, it would have taken longer, and he doubts he would have managed to sit for the state bar exam due to the high costs involved.

In Germany, he is thriving, though. Like others, he mentioned that the transition wasn’t easy; he found the first year lonely, and his classes were harder and moved faster than they would in Uganda. The first winter was rough - he says, “I didn’t know a country could be that cold”. After three years, though, he’s adjusted - remarking philosophically “would we want more sun [in Düsseldorf]? Yes. Will we get it? Probably no.”

Indeed, he loves Germany; he says that he’s one of those immigrants who becomes a little too enthusiastic about their adopted home. He loves German food - he went on a small digression on “leberkäse, schnitzel, and the bread - Jesus” - but more than the material conditions, he loves the freedom. He says that “where I come from, everyone has opinions on how you should live your life; you can’t be anything you choose.” But in Germany, “you can do anything”.

He’s currently working at a global engineering firm in the tax, customs and foreign trade department, and is set to graduate in the next year. He’s still deciding what he wants to do next - either continue through a master’s degree (taught in German) before moving to full-time employment, or gain more work experience and continue with the master’s later.

He is definitely sure he wants to stay in Germany, though; indeed, he plans on taking the German equivalent of the bar exam once he’s eligible.^[14] This credential virtually guarantees he will stay in Germany, as it does not transfer elsewhere. Once he passes, he wants to start his own tax practice.

For more information on Malengo (or to donate to Malengo), see their website.

1. ^{^}

   I would like to make extremely clear that this post was not paid for by Malengo. Indeed, it is, if anything, the other way around. I am a personal donor to Malengo (and have been for several years).

   For this event, Malengo did pay for my bed and meals at the retreat location (a German youth hostel). However, to avoid any allegations of bias, I’ve donated the cost of two days of accommodation and food back to Malengo. I paid for my own flights.

2. ^{^}

   There were small cohorts supporting Ukrainian students and students from Francophone Africa, but >90% of students are Ugandan or refugees who ended up in Uganda.

3. ^{^}

   Though most people attend courses taught in English, knowing German is still essential to get a job after graduation.

^{^}

The repayment period is capped at 10 years; the repayment amount is capped at about 2.5–3 times the amount spent per student. The hope is for Malengo to be eventually self-sustaining, where previous students pay for the next generation of students. Until students are reliably graduating and paying back, though, it is operating on grants and some investments.

^{^}

Harvard is need-blind in terms of admissions and provides substantial financial assistance to international students who are admitted.

^{^}

Total fertility rate in Uganda is 4.3 births per woman.

^{^}

Though some might!

^{^}

A future post will explore this more, but the academic evidence suggests the more selective/skilled the mix of immigrants, the more popular it tends to be with the native-born.

^{^}

Who amongst us, etc.

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One removed for conduct violations, one returned to Uganda but hopes to one day return to Germany

^{^}

One of the Ukrainian students graduated recently and is now repaying.

^{^}

I’m not entirely sure how she finds the time, given that she has her studies, her job, her volunteering and she’s gotten to intermediate German in just a year. (The last alone often takes ~500 hours of study.)

^{^}

Law is an undergraduate course in Uganda, as it is in most of the non-US world.

^{^}

The German bar exam (the second state examination) requires three years of work experience in the field, and is in German, so he plans on doing both a master’s and gaining work experience - he’s only deciding on the order.

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