When it comes to choosing the right place to study, you’d usually want the best if you can help it, and in Africa, over 50 percent of the top universities are concentrated in a single country.
This country is South Africa, as six of the top 10 universities in Africa are based in the nation, at least according to the latest QS World University Ranking. These rankings are for 2025, and emerge after a lengthy analysis of over 1 500 institutions worldwide.
According to the analysis, the top university in the world is the renowned Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This will be the 13th time the university ranked as the first worldwide in terms of the QS methodology, which ranks based on environmental sustainability, the likelihood that graduates will find meaningful employment and the international research output of the university.
Here are the 10 best universities in Africa according to the QS World University Ranking 2025:
- University of Cape Town, South Africa – 171st worldwide
- University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa – 267th worldwide
- Stellenbosch University, South Africa – 296th worldwide
- University of Johannesburg, South Africa – 312th worldwide
- Cairo University, Egypt – 350th worldwide
- University of Pretoria, South Africa – 354th worldwide
- American University in Cairo, Egypt – 410th worldwide
- University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa – 587th worldwide
- Ain Shams University in Cairo, Egypt – 592nd worldwide
- Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia – 771-780th worldwide
The ten best universities in Africa in terms of employment outcomes, sustainability and international research impact are concentrated in South Africa and Egypt, with the single outlier being in Ethiopia. SA and Egypt are notably two of the most developed countries on the continent.
Over 45 universities in Africa were ranked in this latest edition of the QS report. Interestingly, according to the methodology of the report, the University of Cape Town, Africa’s best, has an overall score of 50, while MIT – the best in the world – has an overall score of 100.
[Cover image – CC 0 Gerd Altmann on Pixabay, accompanying images sourced from Wikimedia Commons]
