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KAMPALA - Makerere University has dropped in ranking to 17th position in Africa from 13th as of July 2023, which was its previous position at the beginning of this year.

The new rankings, which also place Makerere at number 1,086 worldwide based on excellence, openness and impact, were released on Monday by Webometrics. 

The "Webometrics Ranking of World Universities" is an initiative of the Cybermetrics Lab, a research group belonging to the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), the largest public research body in Spain. 

Following, in line with Uganda in the continental rankings is Kampala International University (KIU) a private institution at the 61st position.

Mbarara University of Science and Technology (MUST) has come in at 116th position, while Kyambogo University is at 189th.

According to the university rankings, Kyambogo University has risen to 4,177th position from 4,331st at the global level.

In February 2023, Makerere University had been ranked 13th best among Africa's best universities and topmost, outside South Africa and Egypt according to the webometrics rankings.

Top African universities

According to the new rankings, below are the top five African universities

1. University of Cape Town
2. University of the Witwatersrand
3. University of Pretoria
4. Stellenbosch University
5. Cairo University

Top universities in the world

1. Harvard University 
2. Stanford University
3. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
4. University of Oxford
5. University of California Berkeley

Methodology

According to webometrics website, the following are considered in coming up with the rankings.

* The Ranking Web is not a ranking of the websites of Universities, it is a Ranking of Universities. It uses both webometric (all missions) and bibliometric (research mission) indicators

* The primary objective of the Ranking Web is to promote Open Access to the knowledge generated by the University. Best strategy to improve your rank is to increase quantity and quality of your web content

 * Ranking Web started in 2004 (currently is the 20th year of publication) with the aim of offering full coverage of Higher Education institutions whatever the country or discipline involved. Currently, we ranked 31 000 HEIs from more than 200 countries

 * Editors of the Ranking Web are scientists working at one world-class public research institution with long experience in metrics-guided evaluation

 * The Ranking Web or Webometrics is the largest academic ranking of Higher Education Institutions offering every six months an independent, objective, free, open scientific exercise for providing reliable, multidimensional, updated and useful information about the performance of universities from all over the world.