The 10 best universities in Africa

A new university ranking compiled by Thompson Reuters has listed the top 10 tertiary institutions on the African continent, lead by South Africa’s University of Cape Town.
The ranking looks specifically at university reputation, which reflects a university’s ability to recruit high-quality staff and students, establish valuable international partnerships, and connect with greater funding prospects.
The group determined its ranking by analysing all its reputation survey results to date (2010-2014), which contain more than 1.5 million individual data points and have recorded 65,000 responses, covering 6,500 of the world’s leading universities across 105 disciplines.
Africa’s Leading Universities was determined over the five-year period by survey respondents specifically living in Africa.
The ranking is dominated by South African universities, with the University of Cape Town as the clear regional leader in academic reputation.
UCT has consistently topped global university rankings for South Africa, with the exception of one, the Center for World University Rankings (CWUR), which was claimed by the University of the Witwatersrand.
Based on its global ranking, the regional reputation of Egypt’s Cairo University is significantly lower than expected, Thompson Reuters said.
“This may be a reflection of its geographical location to the Middle East,” the group said.
The University of Cape Town is also the only university on the continent to crack the top 200, according to the data, ranking 160th overall.
Cairo University, Wits and TUKS all made it into the top 500.

Top Universities in Africa

Local #	Global #	University	Country
1	160	University of Cape Town	South Africa
2	366	University of Witwatersrand	South Africa
3	438	Stellenbosch University	South Africa
4	366	University of Pretoria	South Africa
5	638	University of KwaZulu Natal	South Africa
6	608	University of Johannesburg	South Africa
7	285	Cairo University	Egypt
8	655	Ain Shams University	Egypt
9	731	Makerere University	Uganda
10	664	University of Ghana	Ghana

According to Thompson Reuters, the disparity between the regional and global ranking can be chalked up to differences in perception.
“A survey respondent’s view on the institutions within his/her geographical area often varies from the general global perspective, primarily because the work of some regional academic leaders may not be as well-known in other parts of the world,” the group noted.
“The second cause of potential gaps between regional and global perceptions appears in cases where the geographical distribution of co-authorship may not correlate to reputation.”