University of Cape Town Retains Top Spot as Best in Africa

The University of Cape Town (UCT) has retained its spot as Africa’s top university, despite a drop of 19 places, tying at 155th among more than 1 500 institutions in the 2021 Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings, which were published on Wednesday, 2 September 2020.

The annual THE World University Rankings assesses institutions worldwide across 13 performance indicators in five areas: teaching, research, citations, international outlook and industry income.

UCT said on its site that its performance across these indicators was mixed, with drops in some areas offset by raised scores in others, compared to the previous year.

UCT’s strongest performance remains in the industry income category (knowledge transfer), and it also improved in the citations category (research influence) and in the ratio of students to academic staff, amongst others.

Scores decreased in the learning environment, ratio of doctorates to bachelor degrees awarded, research income to academic staff score, and international outlook category due to the decline in the number of international students and staff… which impacts campus diversity and income. UCT said it is working hard to find innovative ways to redress this.

A local and global snapshot of Universities

Ten other South African universities were included in the rankings, with the University of the Witwatersrand (201–250) and Stellenbosch University (251-300) in second and third place respectively. The University of KwaZulu-Natal (351–400) and Durban University of Technology (401–500) were the only other South African universities within the global top 500.

Other African universities in the top 500 include Egypt’s Aswan University and Mansoura University (both ranked 401–500), Nigeria’s University of Ibadan (401–500) and Uganda’s Makerere University (401–500).

The University of Oxford leads the THE rankings for the fifth consecutive year, followed by Stanford University in second spot and Harvard University in third place.

UCT top in Africa in four of the five major rankings

Earlier this year, UCT also took the continent’s top place in the Quacquarelli Symonds World University Rankings and in the Centre for World University Rankings. UCT is also Africa’s top university in the US News Best Global Universities rankings, the most recent of which was issued in 2019 and the next release is expected in October.