Makerere University, the oldest and most prestigious university in Uganda, has dropped to 16th position on the African continent and 1,225th globally according to the July 2019 Ranking Web-Webometrics ranking of institutions of higher learning in the world.
The organisation conducts two rankings each year and this July edition is yet another drop that the state owned university is facing. Makerere ranked 11 in Africa and 1,033 in the world in the first edition of the rankings issued in January although it had closed the previous year (2018) in 6th position.
The scientific exercise is performed by the Cyber Metrics Lab (Spanish National Research Council, CSIC) with the intention of producing updated and useful information about the performance of universities from all over the world based on their web presence and impact.
Since 2004, the Webometrics Ranking is published twice a year (data is collected during the first weeks of January and July to be made public at the end of both months), covering more than 28,000 higher education institutions worldwide.
The University of Cape Town topped the African rankings and was followed by University of the Witwatersrand, Stellenbosch University, the University of Pretoria all from South Africa with Cairo University from Egypt sealing the Top 5.
The University of Kwazulu Natal followed in 6th position, 7th is the University of Johannesburg and the University of South Africa in 8th position. The best in the East African region is the University of Nairobi at number 10.
“We intend to motivate institutions and scholars to have a web presence that reflects their activities accurately. If the web performance of an institution is below the expected position according to their academic excellence, university authorities should reconsider their web policy, promoting substantial increases of the volume and quality of their electronic publications,” said authors of the latest raking.
Mbarara University of Science and Technology (MUST) is ranked 50th, while Kyambogo University stands at 176th position and Gulu University at 184th position. Kampala International University (KIU) ranks number 217th on the continent, Uganda Martyrs University at 271, Islamic University in Uganda (IUIU) at 275 and Uganda Christian University (UCU) at 287th.
