Study in Africa: 5 countries compared
South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya and Rwanda — what each country's government publishes about its universities, and what you can do with it here.
5
countries in Africa with a section on this site
0
have a matcher: enter your own grades or scores and see where you stand
5
are directories or finders, where no entry data can be reused
Side by side
In alphabetical order, not ranked. Each country counts its institutions in its own way — one lists universities, another every campus or college — so the numbers describe each section, not the size of the country's system.
| Country | What you can do here | Listed | Usual first degree |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ghana | Directory — community-maintained | 57public, technical & private universities | 4 years (bachelor's) |
| Kenya | Directory — community-maintained | 70public & private universities | 4 years (bachelor's) |
| Nigeria | Directory — 2019 figures | 170federal, state & private universities (as at 2019) | 4 years (bachelor's), 5–6 for engineering, law and medicine |
| Rwanda | Directory — community-maintained | 15universities | 3–4 years (bachelor's) |
| South Africa | Directory | 26public universities | 3 years (bachelor's), 4 for professional degrees |
Every country, A to Z
Ghana
57 public, technical & private universities
- How you get in
- WASSCE results, with each university setting its own aggregate cut-offs per programme
- Taught in
- English
- What it costs
- Not published as open data
- What graduates earn
- Not published as open data
- For students from abroad
- Not published as open data
- What we can't tell you
- Ghana's official register, programme accreditation and per-institution statistics (GTEC) reserve all rights, so this is a Wikidata list of universities by region and nothing more.
Kenya
70 public & private universities
- How you get in
- KCSE results; government-sponsored places are allocated centrally by KUCCPS on cluster points per programme
- Taught in
- English
- What it costs
- Not published as open data
- What graduates earn
- Not published as open data
- For students from abroad
- Not published as open data
- What we can't tell you
- Kenya's register, accredited programmes, enrolment and KUCCPS cut-off points all reserve rights or are licensed non-commercially, so this is a Wikidata list of universities by county and nothing more.
Nigeria
170 federal, state & private universities (as at 2019)
- How you get in
- JAMB's UTME exam plus each university's own post-UTME screening; direct entry with A-levels or a diploma
- Taught in
- English
- What it costs
- Not published as open data
- What graduates earn
- Not published as open data
- For students from abroad
- Not published as open data
- What we can't tell you
- The regulator's newest openly licensed statistics are for 2019, so universities licensed since are missing, and there are no fees or cut-off marks per university under any licence.
Rwanda
15 universities
- How you get in
- Advanced-level national exam results; each institution sets its own requirements
- Taught in
- English (the language of instruction since 2008)
- What it costs
- Not published as open data
- What graduates earn
- Not published as open data
- For students from abroad
- Not published as open data
- What we can't tell you
- Rwanda publishes no per-institution enrolment, fees or outcomes, and its accreditation list states no reuse terms, so this is a Wikidata list of universities and nothing more.
South Africa
26 public universities
- How you get in
- National Senior Certificate results converted to an Admission Point Score (APS), which each university sets per programme
- Taught in
- English at most universities; Afrikaans alongside it at a few
- What it costs
- Not published as open data
- What graduates earn
- Not published as open data
- For students from abroad
- Not published as open data
- What we can't tell you
- Fees and admission point scores are set and published by each university, with no national register, and the Department's report has no international-student count per university.
What isn't here, and why
Only South Africa and Nigeria publish per-university figures under terms that allow reuse, and Nigeria's are from 2019. Ghana's, Kenya's and Rwanda's regulators reserve their registers and statistics, so those three are community-maintained lists and say so. No African country here publishes entry scores under an open licence, so there is no matcher on this continent yet.
Figures are never converted into one currency or ranked across countries: each government measures cost and graduate earnings differently, and every figure above keeps its own definition.
Other regions
Each country's figures come from the source credited on its own pages, under that source's licence. This page adds nothing to them; counts and labels are CollegeMatcher's.