Only 2 universities and zero computer science departments in Africa are in the top 200 in the QS rankings

I distinctly remember last year when the Head of the Computer Science Department at the University of Helsinki gathered majority of the departmental staff to celebrate the department being ranked 1st in the Nordic region and coming 101-150 around the world – according to the QS World University Ranking. The University of Helsinki as a whole comes in at number 102 globally in the QS ranking and 90 in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings. While standing there,  I naturally wondered which African universities and especially computer science departments appeared on this same list.

To answer my question, using the same QS ranking system (which judges institutions along the core missions of research, teaching, knowledge transfer, and international outlook), I visualized the top 5 universities and top 5 computer science departments across all the continents. In the analysis, I chose to separate the Middle Eastern countries for further comparison.

So what does the QS ranking list show?

3 of the top 5 universities on the African continent are in South Africa and the other two are in Egypt.

(Full size)

As can be seen in the map, the first African university to appear on the QS ranking is the University of Cape Town, in South Africa, coming in at no. 191.

Looking solely at the ranking of African universities, I found that the top 15 universities on the continent constitute:

7 universities in South Africa,  5 in Egypt, and 1 in Uganda, Ghana and Kenya respectively. 

With the Times Higher Education ranking, Makerere University in Uganda, comes in fifth rather than 12 as ranked by the QS ranking [source].

In addition, I looked at the ranking of computer science departments around the world and found that:

Only 2 computer science departments in Africa appear in the rankings, one in South Africa and one in Egypt.

(Full size)

The QS ranking system uses six metrics to evaluate universities, namely: Academic reputation, employer reputation, faculty / student ratio, citations per faculty, international faculty ratio, and international student ratio [1]. Other ranking systems like the Times Higher Education and the Shanghai ranking use different metrics for their evaluation. In majority of these rankings, the top 10 spots are dominated by universities in the USA and UK, though in recent years, a few Asian universities, mostly South Korean have climbed up to be in the top 20.

When it comes to the ranking of universities, there are debates on whether these rankings say anything of the actual quality of the institutions. For instance, those universities that have sufficient resources can game the ranking system. I tend to agree with Ward [2] that these indicators and metrics “tend to greatly overvalue the ‘haves’ at the expense of the ‘have nots’.”  Many of the metrics used emphasize strong research results and these results are strongly influenced by the amount of resources reserved for research and international cooperation by universities. Research is expensive, publishing in top journals is expensive, and resources (and a good reputation) are needed to attract international students and leading faculty – which rules out a lot of institutions in developing countries.

Recently, there has been talk of creating ranking systems exclusively focused on Africa, like The Times Higher Education African ranking that was piloted in July 2015. This ranking uses metrics that take into account the developing context of the continent. However, I don’t know if this captures quality either and I do not see how this will help the institutions compete with the rest of the world.

When it comes to ranking African universities, another issue pointed out by former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan at the African Higher Education Summit in Dakar in 2015,  is that there is a chronic lack of data available about Africa’s universities – data is missing to accurately rank and compare universities [3]. This was also supported by the World bank and Elsevier report [4]. Missing data, of course can lead to miss-ranking of universities, which can affect resource allocation and the awarding of grants and projects. It has been reported that Africa accounts for 1% of world research outputs [4], but this number could, in reality, be higher. But it is probably not as high as it should be. Research breeds innovations, and for me, improving research (also linked to resources) is a key outcome that would make a difference. On top of that, there is also a need to strengthen the data collection for accurate reporting and decision making – both areas interest and motivate me greatly.

 

Sources:

[1] QS Top Universities (June 2017), QS World University Rankings Methodology, https://www.topuniversities.com/qs-world-university-rankings/methodology

[2] Steven C. Ward (October 2, 2014), What do world university rankings actually mean? The Conversation, https://theconversation.com/what-do-world-university-rankings-actually-mean-32355

[3] Damtew Teferra (September 3, 2015), Ranking African universities is a futile endeavour, The Conversation, https://theconversation.com/ranking-african-universities-is-a-futile-endeavour-46692

[4] Blom, A., Lan, G., & Adil, M. (2015). Sub-Saharan African science, technology, engineering, and mathematics research: a decade of development. World Bank Publications.

*The maps were created with R’s leaflet and map packages.