The University of Ibadan, Obafemi Awolowo University and the University of Lagos are missing from the list of the 30 best universities in Africa for 2015 in a rating released by the World Economic Forum (WEF). The University of Port Harcourt was named as the sixth best university in Africa, trailing four South African and one Ugandan university.
The list, which was dominated by South Africa and Egypt, saw the southern Africa country amass 12 positions on the ranking, with the north African country trailing with half a dozen schools. Morocco had three universities.
Tunisia came up with another three, while Kenya, Ghana, Cameroon, Uganda, Ethiopia and Nigeria had a single university in the 2015 ranking.
According to WEF, “these results are essentially based on the amount of citations there are for the university’s work”. Quoting Times Higher Education (THE), WEF said the universities are “derived from the methodology for the current world university ranking, using the 13 factors (below), combining THE’s own enormous database of statistics along with the Elsevier’s Scopus database – a system that highlights some of the continent’s top performers in terms of how often research papers are referred to and cited by other academics globally”.
“This methodology is designed for the research-led globally facing university. Times Higher Education emphasised that not everyone in Africa will find the metrics appropriate to their mission or their strategic priorities making this ranking a starting point of a longer, inclusive conversation involving African institutions.”
FULL LIST OF TOP 30 UNIVERSITIES IN AFRICA (2015):
| Rank | Name | Country | All publications (2009-13) | Citation Score |
| 1 | University of Cape Town | South Africa | 5540.21 | 99.90 |
| 2 | University of the Witwatersrand | South Africa | 4387.17 | 99.76 |
| 3 | Makerere University | Uganda | 1112.69 | 99.72 |
| 4 | Stellenbosch University | South Africa | 4357.33 | 95.48 |
| 5 | University of KwaZulu-Natal | South Africa | 4235.09 | 89.41 |
| 6 | University of Port Harcourt | Nigeria | 573.55 | 88.92 |
| 7 | University of the Western Cape | South Africa | 1154.77 | 84.61 |
| 8 | University of Nairobi | Kenya | 671.72 | 84.60 |
| 9 | University of Johannesburg | South Africa | 2192.74 | 83.64 |
| 10 | University of Marrakech Cadi Ayyad | Morocco | 910.82 | 78.61 |
| 11 | University of Pretoria | South Africa | 4544.33 | 75.89 |
| 12 | University of Ghana | Ghana | 804.53 | 73.31 |
| 13 | University of South Africa | South Africa | 981.67 | 72.51 |
| 14 | Suez Canal University | Egypt | 998.98 | 69.69 |
| 15 | University of Hassan II Casablanca | Morocco | 960.25 | 69.03 |
| 16 | Addis Ababa University | Ethiopia | 893.90 | 64.84 |
| 17 | Rhodes University | South Africa | 1296.96 | 64.54 |
| 18 | University of the Free State | South Africa | 1512.56 | 62.83 |
| 19 | North-West University | South Africa | 1707.94 | 60.75 |
| 20 | University of Tunis | Tunisia | 879.63 | 57.26 |
| 21 | Ecole Nationale d’Ingénieurs de Sfax | Tunisia | 822.31 | 57.24 |
| 22 | Université Mohammed V – Agdal | Morocco | 1503.69 | 56.85 |
| 23 | American University in Cairo | Egypt | 700.89 | 56.40 |
| 24 | Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University | South Africa | 885.77 | 53.29 |
| 25 | South Valley University | Egypt | 636.85 | 52.49 |
| 26 | Alexandria University | Egypt | 2550.15 | 52.24 |
| 27 | Assiut University | Egypt | 1588.64 | 50.41 |
| 28 | University of Sfax | Tunisia | 2355.30 | 49.79 |
| 29 | University of Yaounde I | Cameroon | 876.33 | 49.72 |
| 30 | Minia University | Egypt | 694.79 | 48.36 |
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