For decades, university rankings have played an important role in shaping how institutional excellence is understood and assessed. They provide useful points of comparison and contribute to conversations about the performance and progress of higher education institutions around the world.
Today, African higher education institutions have an opportunity to contribute a new perspective to that conversation. Through the Africa Higher Education Rankings, The Education Collaborative is working with stakeholders across the continent to develop a rankings system conceived in Africa and shaped by Africans. The aim is to create a framework that reflects the priorities, ambitions and diverse contributions of African higher education institutions.
At the heart of the initiative is a simple idea: Africa can define and measure excellence in higher education through a framework developed by Africans, for Africa.
Prof Kwasi Dartey-Baah, Vice-Chancellor, Central University, a key advocate of the Africa rankings system, asserts, “The goal is to develop a rankings system for Africans that intentionally tells Africa’s story. In developing a rankings system for Africans, we should clearly craft the African story and lace it in the design.”
The Education Collaborative is bringing African institutions and stakeholders into the process from the outset, ensuring that the framework is informed by the experiences and perspectives of the institutions it serves.
During one of the stakeholder consultations, Executive Director of The Education Collaborative, Rose Dodd, captured this aspiration when she said, “It’s about time we asked ourselves how long we want to be measured by a yardstick that we haven’t contributed to.”
Her words reflect a broader ambition for the program: African institutions should have the opportunity to help shape the standards by which their excellence and impact are assessed.
Many widely recognized global rankings place significant emphasis on indicators such as research output, citation counts, international reputation, and global visibility. While these measures remain important, they do not always capture the full scope of the work undertaken by African institutions.
Across the continent, universities play a critical role in workforce development, entrepreneurship, community engagement, public service, and nation-building. The Africa Higher Education Rankings seeks to recognize these contributions alongside more traditional measures of academic performance, encouraging a more holistic understanding of institutional excellence and ensuring that their impact is measured in ways reflective of these realities.
By measuring performance in areas that matter to African institutions and the societies they serve, the rankings have the potential to provide institutions with valuable insights, encourage continuous improvement and contribute to stronger higher education systems.
Building the rankings with the sector
The journey toward developing Africa’s first continent-wide higher education rankings system began in 2019 when nineteen university leaders from six countries came together for the Beyond Rankings conversation to consider a fundamental question: what does success mean for an African university? The conversation laid important groundwork for a broader discussion about how excellence in African higher education should be understood and measured.
That conversation took a significant step forward in 2023 with the launch of the Sub-Saharan Africa University Rankings, developed through a partnership between Times Higher Education (THE) and the Mastercard Foundation. The rankings introduced a regionally informed methodology that included a first-of-its-kind student survey, offering a broader perspective on institutional performance. Its inaugural edition featured institutions from Nigeria and Ghana to Kenya, Ethiopia, and South Africa.
From there, the work found a new home on the continent. In partnership with the Mastercard Foundation, The Education Collaborative took on the Africa Higher Education Rankings as an African-owned effort, shaped by the priorities and realities of African higher education.
In March 2026, The Education Collaborative hosted an in-person stakeholder engagement session during its West Africa Hub Convening. University leaders and higher education stakeholders gathered to discuss the proposed direction of the rankings and contribute ideas that would help shape its design.
Similar engagements were held virtually in April and May 2026, expanding the conversation and bringing together diverse voices from across Africa’s higher education landscape.
That engagement has continued. On 13 and 14 August 2026, the Rankings Unit participated in the East Africa Hub Strategic and Technical Committees Meeting in Nairobi, Kenya. The discussions gave members an opportunity to engage directly with the Africa Higher Education Rankings program, generating valuable suggestions, feedback, and perspectives that are now being considered as the program’s design continues to take shape.
The approach is deliberate. A ranking designed for African higher education should be informed by institutions and stakeholders who understand the sector, its diversity, and its ambitions. By bringing these voices into the process, the Africa Higher Education Rankings is building on the work that came before while charting the next chapter of an African-led approach to measuring higher education excellence.
Establishing the Interim Advisory Council
The program has also reached an important stage in its governance development.
Following the close of the application window for the Interim Advisory Council, all applications received were screened and evaluated against established selection criteria. The process also considered broader factors, including regional diversity, Francophone representation, and diversity in institutional and professional perspectives.
Following this assessment, the final members of the Interim Advisory Council were selected to bring diverse expertise and perspectives to support the development of the Africa Higher Education Rankings Program.
The Council held its inaugural meeting on 21 August 2026, with 100 percent member participation. The meeting marked an important milestone in the program’s development, giving members their first opportunity to begin their advisory role and help shape the next phase of the rankings.
The establishment of the Council builds on earlier stakeholder consultations and adds another layer of African expertise and representation to the development of the program. Its role will be important in helping shape the governance architecture and long-term direction of the rankings, while supporting the credibility, transparency and sustainability of the initiative.
More than a measure of performance
While the Africa Higher Education Rankings is still taking shape, its ambition extends beyond producing another table of institutions.
“Rankings shouldn’t just measure performance. They should drive it,” says Nhyira Sam, Director of the Africa Higher Education Rankings. “We are co-creating a yardstick developed by African institutions, for African institutions, turning data into action that shapes policy and strengthens higher education systems.”
That vision captures the broader ambition of the program: not simply to measure excellence, but to help shape it.
By creating a framework developed in Africa and by Africans, the Africa Higher Education Rankings represents an opportunity to place African voices, expertise and priorities at the center of how higher education excellence is understood on the continent.
This article was originally published by The Education Collaborative and is republished here with permission.
The Education Collaborative is a pan-African network advancing higher education through collaborative research, practice-driven programs, and shared accountability among universities and education leaders, with a focus on strengthening graduate outcomes and long-term institutional impact.