The University of Zambia (UNZA) has been ranked 6th best university in Africa from 156 universities in 20 countries by the Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings while at the global level UNZA has been ranked in the 501-600 position out of 1,799 participating universities.
Announcing the development, the University of Zambia Acting Vice-Chancellor, Prof Boniface Namangala, said that the 2023 Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings included 1,799 universities from 104 countries and regions, making them the largest rankings in the year among the three known major rankings.
“This is the first time the University has been ranked by the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, one of the top three (3) identified major world university rankings besides Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings and Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), also known as Shanghai. It is a great milestone for the University to be ranked 6th among the best universities in Africa and in the 501 – 600 bracket at the international level,” Prof Namangala said.
Prof Namangala said the ranking analysis was based on 13 calibrated performance indicators to measure an institution’s performance across the major four (4) areas namely; teaching, research, citations, and international outlook.
He said at the global level, UNZA ranked in the 501-600 position out of 1,799 participating universities, with an overall score of 39.3 to 42.0. He said despite the low score overall, the university did extremely well in citations with a 96.8 score. “This shows that despite having a small number of publications in SCOPUS, those indexed are highly used in research development,” he said.
Prof Namangala further said the actual scores for the four areas were 15.7 for teaching, 9.2 for research, 38.4 for industry income, and 49.8 for international outlook. “ This development points to the fact that there is a need for more UNZA research-affiliated indexed publications in the SCOPUS since this is the tool THE draws its research data from,” he said.
Prof Namangala said under research and citations, 121 million citations across over 15.5 million research publications were analysed, while survey responses from 40,000 scholars globally were received. “The University of Zambia was one of the institutions that entered the ranking for the first time. At the global level, UNZA’s participation was rated in the 501-600, beating several universities that have been in the ranking for some time with overall scores of 39.3 - 42.0,” he said.
The other top-ranked African universities that took part in the ranking include the University of Cape Town (1st position), Stellenbosch University, the University of Witwatersrand (2nd position), the University of Cape Coast (4th position), Aswan University, the University of Ibadan, University of KwaZulu-Natal, the University of Lagos (5th position), while Jimma University, Damietta University, Durban University of Technology, Kafrelsheikh University and the University of Zambia (6th position).
1. World University Rankings 2023: These Are the Best Universities in Africa.