By James Wakahiu
University of Nairobi (UON) leads as Strathmore, MKU maintain position as the East
African region’s top private institutions
The University of Nairobi has maintained its position as Kenya’s top institution of
higher learning according to the latest list of top 100 universities in Africa issued
by EduRank.
However, Makerere University of Uganda ranked in position seven, as UON
Takes eighth position to become the leading university in the East African region.
The top 100 universities in Africa are ranked by EduRank based on research outputs, non-
academic prominence, and alumni influence, EduRank said in a statement.
Locally, UON is followed by Kenyatta University (38), JKUAT (53), Strathmore
University (68), Moi University (73), Mount Kenya University (81) and Egerton
University (83).
Strathmore and MKU are the only private institutions from East
Africa ranked among the 100 colleges from the continent.
Other colleges listed from this region are Addis Ababa University of Ethiopia (19)
and Tanzania’s University of Dar es Salaam (25), Sokoine University (49) and
Muhimbili University. From Uganda, Mbarara University is ranked 95 th , becoming
the 13 th institution to be listed from Eastern Africa.
"The rankings are determined by analyzing 24.5M citations received by 2.16M
academic publications made by 1,104 universities from Africa, the popularity of
3,700 recognized alumni, and the largest reference database available,” EduRank
says in a statement.
The top 10 universities in Africa were the University of Cape Town, University of
the Witwatersrand, University of Stellenbosch, University of Pretoria, Cairo
University, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Makerere University, University of
Nairobi, University of Johannesburg and University of South Africa.
Over the years, the University of Nairobi has been ranked among the top
universities in Africa and the world. UoN was previously ranked ahead of its fierce
competitor Makerere University in a survey by Webometrics which analyses all
institutions of higher learning in the world.
Webometrics ranks universities based on impact, openness and excellence
parameters in its ranking. Makerere University and UoN frequently trade positions
one and two in the Eastern Africa region in surveys conducted by different entities
EduRank.org is an independent metric-based ranking of 14,131 universities from
183 countries. It utilize the world's largest scholarly papers database with
98,302,198 scientific publications and 2,149,512,106 citations to rank universities
across 246 research topics.
The researcher conducts a series of statistical analyses to generate comparative
university rankings in various fields, by country, region, and globally. “In the
overall rankings, we add non-academic prominence and alumni popularity
indicators,” says EduRank, but advises interested parties to always check official
university websites for the latest enrollment information.
www.themountainjournal.co.ke
