26th June, 2023
Of Nigeria’s 258 universities, only Covenant University in Ota Ogun state makes the top ten of the inaugural Times Higher Education’s (THE) Sub-Saharan Africa University Rankings.
THE’s Sub-Saharan Africa University Rankings 2023 were officially announced Monday at the organisation’s first forum which took place in partnership with Ashesi University in Ghana.
Four of the top 10 universities are from South Africa and two are from Tanzania.
The University of the Witwatersrand, in Johannesburg, South Africa, topped the ranking .
More commonly known as Wits University, it celebrated its centenary last year and has Nelson Mandela amongst its alumni.
The second highest ranked university is University of Johannesburg in South Africa and in third place is Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences, in Tanzania.
University of Pretoria is fourth and Makerere University in Uganda is 5th. University of the Western Cape, also in South Africa is 6th.
Covenant University, a private Christian university in Ota, Ogun State, Nigeria, founded in 2002 is ranked 7th. The university, with affiliation to Bishop David Oyedepo’s Living Faith Church Worldwide is a member of the Association of Commonwealth Universities.
University of Global Health Equity (UGHE) in Rwanda is ranked eight, Ashesi University in Ghana is 9th, while Ardhi University in Tanzania is 10th.
“This unique pioneering ranking, which was developed specifically for, and led-by, African education organisations, marks a really significant moment for higher education in the continent”, said Phil Baty, Times Higher Education’s chief global affairs officer.
“It clearly demonstrates the broad and diverse strengths of a wide range of universities and numerous previously unknown differences between public and private universities, which is further illuminated by the results from the student survey.
“We hope this ranking will help African universities celebrate and showcase good practice, benchmark themselves against peers, and identify key areas where they can improve. Collectively, we hope it helps universities to collaborate to address the challenges the continent faces.
“We also hope the ranking will be a valuable tool for the millions of parents and prospective students who are increasingly looking for authoritative information about what a university education will give them,” Baty added.
The pioneering new ranking highlights the strongest universities in Sub-Saharan Africa across a comprehensive range of performance indicators covering five pillars: ‘access and fairness’, ‘Africa impact’, ‘teaching skills’, ‘student engagement’ and ‘resources and finance’.
The Sub-Saharan Africa University Rankings, produced in partnership with Mastercard Foundation, ranks 88 universities from 17 countries in the region.
Nigeria has the most universities in the ranking with 37, followed by South Africa with nine, Ghana and Kenya have seven each and Somalia and Uganda have five each.
The ranking provides a rich source of data on the differences between public and private universities.
Of the 88 ranked universities, 59 (67%) are public, 21 (24%) are private not-for-profit and eight are private for-profit (9%) and seven of the top 10 universities are public.
Public universities received an average overall score in the rankings of 50 and charged students a median of £966 per year. By comparison, private institutions scored an average of 43, with not-for-profits charging £1,922 and for-profits charging £3,291 annually.
Public providers scored higher, on average, across four of the five pillars: access and fairness; Africa impact, resources and finance and student engagement. Private universities generally perform better on teaching and employability skills.
Public universities tend to have considerably more students than private ones averaging more than 18,000 students compared with an average of about 3,500 for private universities and public universities are, on average, almost twice as old (28 years) as private universities (18 years).
A key component of the ranking is a unique student survey accounting for their experiences, which shows students in private universities are generally more satisfied with their experience compared with their public counterparts when judging the facilities, their interaction with peers and the faculty, employability, course quality and teaching engagement.
The Sub-Saharan Africa University Rankings methodology was developed by THE’s data team, in consultation with university leaders across Sub-Saharan Africa. The project was initially created by a consortia of African and international higher education organisations including Botho Ltd, Maverick Research and MyCos Data, led by Ashesi University.
THE independently managed all data collection and calculations. The ranking was created in partnership with the Mastercard Foundation.
Details of the ranking of the 88 universities by THE: 
