UCT remains top university in Africa

The University of Cape Town (UCT) remains the top university in Africa, holding its position at ninth in the 2019 Times Higher Education (THE) Emerging Economies University Rankings.

For the Emerging Economies Rankings, THE uses the same 13 performance indicators as for their World University Rankings to judge a university’s strengths across teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook.

However, the weightings are recalibrated to better reflect the characteristics and priorities of universities in emerging economies. More weighting is given to a university’s industry links and international outlook, for example.

UCT’s scores in the teaching and research categories increased, as did its reputation survey scores, which are the most prominent within these categories. This offers a good indicator of the institution’s positive international reputation among leading academics.

The notably improved research score confirms UCT as a research-intensive institution producing cutting-edge outputs.

“The notably improved research score confirms UCT as a research-intensive institution producing cutting-edge outputs.”

Destination of choice

Scores for the citations and international outlook categories increased too, pointing to the continued impact and influence of UCT’s research and affirming the university as a destination of choice for international students.

Despite a slight drop in the industry income category, which reflects UCT’s research impact and contribution to industry, this remains the university’s highest score across the categories.

China continues to dominate the Emerging Economies University Rankings, with seven universities in the top 10. This year Tsinghua University surpasses Peking University as the top institution overall. Zhejiang University moves up three places to third position, displacing Lomonosov Moscow State University which moves down to fifth.

South Africa has nine institutions in the ranking, up from eight last year, and retains seven in the top 200.

The ranking includes 442 universities from 43 countries.