Subject rankings: Africa performs in field of medicine

Universities in South Africa and Egypt emerged as the best places to study in Africa in the five broad academic fields including arts and humanities, engineering and technology, life sciences and medicine, natural sciences, and social sciences and management, according to the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2024 that were released on April 10.

In the 14th edition of the rankings, 35 universities in 11 African countries were among 1,500 universities in 96 countries and territories globally that were rated across a total of 55 academic subject fields that were organised into five broad academic fields or clusters. In Africa only 44 subject fields were analysed.

Egypt had 13 universities, South Africa 10, Nigeria three, and Ghana two, while seven other countries, Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan, Tanzania, Tunisia, Uganda, and Zimbabwe had one university each in the rankings.

The University of Cape Town (UCT) was ranked 15th in development studies – the best ranking of any African university in any one subject.

The best performance from the African cohort of universities was in the academic field or cluster of medicine in which 28 universities, representing 80% of the African universities on the QS-list were ranked. A notable performance of African universities was also in agriculture and forestry, in which 18 universities, representing about half of the African group, were ranked.

But some concerns also emerged. In the 14th edition of the QS rankings, African universities were not ranked at all in 25% of the 44 subject areas included. The 11 subjects in which no institution was ranked include classics, philosophy, data science, anatomy, nursing, modern languages, history of art, music, performing arts, social policy and sports-related subjects.

Arts and humanities

Of all the universities on the continent, UCT also obtained the best position in the broad thematic category of arts and humanities, as it was in 214th position globally, but had dropped 22 places from last year.

Cairo University was placed second on the arts and humanities list in Africa as it was in position 251st globally – a drop of eight places from last year, while Stellenbosch University (SU) in position 312 globally, was listed as the third-best place in Africa to pursue studies in arts and humanities.

The arts and humanities category had 13 subject areas assessed. They were archaeology, architecture, art and design, classics, English, history, history of art, and linguistics. Other subject areas included in this cluster were modern languages, music, performing arts, philosophy, and theology.

In this context, other African universities that were among the top 500 universities globally in arts and humanities-based subject areas included the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), the American University in Cairo (AUC), the University of Pretoria (UP) as well as the University of Johannesburg (UJ).

According to the datasets, the performance of African universities in arts and humanities in the current rankings was relatively low compared to the previous one as, apart from SU, all the other universities in the category dropped places. The biggest drop, by 50 places, was UP.

Engineering and technology

Cairo University, in position 149th globally, led 11 universities in Egypt and South Africa that were rated as the best places to study engineering and technology in Africa, a category that grouped eight disciplines together, namely: computer science, data science, chemical, civil, electrical, mechanical, mineral, and petroleum engineering.

Ain Shams University of Egypt was in the second position in Africa and 278th globally, while UCT settled in third place after dropping from 270th to 290th position globally; and from first to third in Africa.

Alexandria University, also in Egypt, and UP tied for the fourth position in Africa after being ranked in the 334th position overall. The AUC was placed in 378th position globally, which was an improvement from its place in the 401-450 band in the previous QS rating.

Similarly, Wits and UJ also tied in the 400-450 bracket, while Mansoura University of Egypt and UJ tied in the 451-500 band. A newcomer to this group was Assiut University of Egypt, which was placed in the 501-550 classification.

Life sciences and medicine

A total of 11 African universities were also ranked among the world’s best universities in life sciences and medicine, a grouping covering subject areas such as agriculture and forestry, anatomy, biological sciences, dentistry, medicine, nursing, pharmacy, psychology, and veterinary medicine.

UCT was the best university in Africa overall in this category as it was placed in the 117th position globally, dropping four places from last year’s edition. Cairo University was second in Africa and 192nd globally after dropping 29 places from the previous edition.

Other African universities ranked in the top 500 universities globally in life sciences and medicine are SU (238th), Wits (273rd), UP (314th), Ain Shams (314th), Alexandria (342nd), University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) (351st), Mansoura (401-450 bracket) and Uganda’s Makerere University (451-500).

Nigeria’s University of Ibadan was in the band of 501-550 and joined Makerere as the only two African universities outside Egypt and South Africa to be ranked in any of the broad thematic categories.

Medicine

The best performance from the African cohort of universities was in the academic field or cluster of medicine in which 28 universities were ranked.

The African group in medicine was led by UCT, which was ranked in position 89th globally and Cairo University in position 174th – the only two African institutions in the top-200 list of universities globally in this field.

Further, medicine emerged as the area that had the highest mix of universities across the continent as, apart from those in Egypt and South Africa, other regional universities in that category included Makerere (251-300), Nigeria’s University of Ibadan (351-400), the University of Ghana (401-450), Kenya’s University of Nairobi (501-550), Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia (601-650), the University of Zimbabwe (651-700), the University of Nigeria Nsukka (651-700) and Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (701-720), also in Ghana.

A notable performance of African universities was also in agriculture and forestry in which 18 universities representing 51.4% of the African group were ranked. SU was the top African university in the 91st position overall and was the only African university in the top 100 globally in the category.

Agriculture and forestry had the second-largest mix of African universities as South Africa had seven universities, Egypt had six, while Uganda, Kenya, Ghana, Tanzania, and Nigeria had one university each on the list.

Natural sciences

Ten universities, six from South Africa and four from Egypt were ranked in the natural sciences category, a group that consisted of nine disciplines: chemistry, earth and marine sciences, environmental science, geography, geology, geophysics, mathematics, materials science, and physics.

UCT, in the 233rd position globally in this cluster, was the top African university in the grouping, although it was 18 places down from the previous position it held in the 13th ranking edition.

Cairo University was in second position in Africa after clinching the 275th spot globally, while other African universities in the top 500 universities in the natural sciences segment included Wits (350th), while SU, UJ, UKZN, UP, and Ain Shams were all placed in the 400-450 bracket. Subsequently, both Alexandria and Mansoura universities were listed in the 501-550 band.

Social sciences and management

UCT was also the top university in Africa in social sciences and management, a cluster of 16 subject areas that included accounting, anthropology, business, communication, development studies, economics and econometrics, and education. Other disciplines in the group were education, hospitality, law, library, marketing, politics, sociology, sports-related subjects, and statistics.

Strengths and weaknesses

In addition to faring well in the subject fields of medicine and agriculture and forestry, the universities in the African contingent also did relatively well in chemistry. A total of 15 universities were ranked as well in biological sciences (12), physics and astronomy (12), computer science (11), and electrical and electronics engineering (10).

However, low performance was recorded in dentistry, arts and design, media studies, politics, statistics, psychology, theology, history, geophysics, geology, geography, linguistics, and library science, as only one or two African universities were ranked in each of these disciplines.

But, even worse, there was no African university that was assessed or ranked in 11 subject areas including classics, philosophy, data science, anatomy, and nursing. They were also not ranked in modern languages, history of art, music, performing arts, social policy, and sports-related subjects.

According to a briefing by QS Quacquarelli Symonds, the rankings were based on academic reputation derived from the expert opinion of 144,000 university faculty members. The rankings also considered the employer’s reputation, an indicator that was based on the opinions of 98,000 hiring managers, human resources and talent managers.

Simona Bizzozero, the communications director at QS Quacquarelli Symonds, noted that the rankings took into account the universities’ academic publication citation per paper as contained in the bibliometric database of Scopus/Elsevier, as well as the h-index, which indicates the number of publications of an author and how many times each has been cited by other authors.

But, whereas there were indicators that Africa is slowly expanding its learning capacity, the main worry is that only a few universities are doing so and most of them are just in South Africa and Egypt. Concerns are also emerging that some subjects in African universities were not even considered for ranking.