Despite the turmoil at The University of Nairobi (UoN), the 64-year-old varsity is the only institution of higher learning in Kenya to make it in The World University Rankings 2020 exposing the lack of quality at Kenyan institutions in comparison to African and global peers.
UoN is ranked at position 801 globally and 20th in Africa in the list where the University of Cape Town (South Africa) is the best-rated institution in the continent but ranks at position 136 globally.
Striking a blow to Kenya’s bragging rights, 20 Egyptian universities and 10 South African institutions make the cut while Algeria (8), Tunisia (6), Nigeria (4) and Morocco (3) boast of more representation than Kenya.
The report authored by London based education magazine Times Higher Education uses Learning Environment (30%), Research (30%), Citations (30%), International Outlook (7.5%), Industry Income (2.5%) as its key criteria for the rankings.
The University of Cape Town (South Africa), University of Witwatersrand (South Africa), Stellenbosch University (South Africa), Aswan University (Egypt), Covenant University (Nigeria), University of KwaZulu-Natal (South Africa), Mansoura University (Egypt), University of Ibadan (Nigeria), North-West University (South Africa) and Suez Canal University (Egypt) are ranked as the top 10 universities in Africa.
By the same token, the list of the top 10 institutions in the world is dominated by the United States and the UK. No institution from another country makes the first ten.
The University of Oxford (UK), California Institute of Technology (US), The University of Cambridge (UK), Stanford University (US), Massachusetts Institute of Technology- MIT (US), Princeton University (US), Harvard University (US), Yale University (US), University of Chicago (US) and the Imperial College of London (UK) are ranked as the top 10 world’s finest respectively.
In East Africa, Kenya’s neighbours Tanzania and Uganda are both represented by one institution each.
The prestigious Makerere University (Uganda) ranks higher than UoN at position 11 in Africa and 601 globally.
Tanzania, on the other hand, is represented by the University of Dar es Salaam which is ranked at 29 in the continent but does not make the top 1,000 institutions in the world.
