NIGERIA – Three Nigerian universities, the University of Ibadan, UI, University of Lagos, UNILAG, and Covenant University, have secured spots in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2023, placing them among the top 1,000 universities globally.
The comprehensive list of 1,799 universities spanning 104 countries and regions makes this year’s ranking the largest and most diverse to date.
In Nigeria, the University of Ibadan took the lead, followed by UNILAG and Covenant University.
The University of Ibadan not only ranks as the best in Nigeria but also stands as the third-best in Africa, coming after the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa and Aswan University in Egypt.
In the global standing, both the University of Ibadan and UNILAG are ranked between the 401 and 500 best universities, with the former taking the lead due to certain indices considered by the Times Higher Education.
Covenant University, on the other hand, ranks between 600 and 800, making it the 10th best in Africa.
Beyond the top 1,000, Bayero University Kano (BUK) and the Federal University of Agriculture (FUTA) secured spots between 1,001 and 1,200, marking them as the fourth and fifth best Nigerian universities.
Compared to other African nations, Egypt has 14 universities, South Africa five, while Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda each have one university in the top 1,000.
The University of Oxford in the United Kingdom is ranked as the best university in the world, followed by Harvard University in the United States, with the University of Cambridge rounding out the top three.
All ten top universities are located in the United States and the United Kingdom.
The Times Higher Education in their ranking on Thursday, June 29, 2023, based their rankings on 13 performance indicators, measuring teaching, research, knowledge transfer, and international outlook.
Over 121 million citations across more than 15.5 million research publications were analyzed, with responses from 40,000 scholars worldwide considered.
Mainland China secured the fourth-highest number of institutions in the top 200, overtaking Australia.
Notably, five African countries – Zambia, Namibia, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and Mauritius – made their debut in the ranking this year.
