The ”Webometrics” Ranking of World Universities 2022 was made available on August 9th . Four Cameroonian Universities emerged amongst the best and can be proud as they represented sub-Saharan African countries in this very popular ranking, which evaluates the web content of universities worldwide of which the University of Buea tops.
This ranking 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. This is the 18th year of publication.
Four Cameroonian public universities are in the top 100 in this web ranking for sub-Saharan Africa. First of all, there is the University of Buea which ranks 64th in the top 100. The University of Yaoundé I is in 78th place. And finally, the universities of Dschang and Ngaoundéré, which are respectively ranked 83rd and 96th in this ranking.
These four universities are among the six universities in the Francophone zone present in this ranking. They are in the company of the University of Abomey-Calavi in Benin (63rd) and the Senegalese University Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar (66th). Côte d’Ivoire’s Félix Houphouët Boigny University is only in 101st place.
Eight South African universities occupy the top positions in the top 100. The University of Cape Town and the Witwatersrand top the list. The Rainbow Nation is represented by a total of 23 universities. But it is Nigeria that dominates the ranking in terms of quantity with 33 universities in the top 100.
On a global scale, American universities are the leaders. They occupy the podium with Harvard, Stanford and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Only the British universities of Oxford (4th) and Cambridge (11th) are able to compete. It is not until 73rd place that the first European university is ranked: the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. And the 245th place to see the University of Cape Town.
“The initial objective of the ranking is to promote academic presence on the web, supporting open access initiatives to significantly increase the transfer of scientific and cultural knowledge generated by universities to society as a whole,” explain the initiators.
They warn, however, that it is not a question of evaluating websites, their design, their user-friendliness or the popularity of their contents according to the number of visits or visitors.
JDC TV, Video news 
