If the inaugural QS (Quacquarelli Symonds) World University Rankings (WUR): Sub-Saharan Africa is anything to go by, Stellenbosch University (SU) is well on its way to realising its vision of becoming Africa’s leading research-intensive university.

According to the QS WUR: Sub-Saharan Africa, released on Thursday 12 February 2026, SU academics are the most prolific on the continent when it comes to research outputs (papers published), particularly in the subject areas of Life Sciences and Medicine, Engineering and Technology, and Social Sciences and Management. Based on data extracted in January 2025 from the Scopus database of high-quality peer-reviewed journals, they produced 17 000 papers between 2019 and 2023. That amounts to about 3 400 papers per year or nearly 283 publications every month. 

In addition to boasting the most productive academics in Africa, SU has the second highest number of academic staff with PhDs in South Africa (third in Africa). It also ranked third in academic reputation and web impact, both locally and continentally.

Overall, SU occupies the fourth position in Africa and South Africa out of 69 institutions (14 universities in South Africa) that were evaluated.  

These institutions were assessed across the following nine indicators: academic reputation (global academics’ perceptions of an institution’s academic excellence), employer reputation (global employers’ perception of which universities provide the most job-ready graduates), citations per faculty (average number of citations obtained per publication), papers per faculty (average number of publications by academics), faculty student ratio (the ratio between the number of academic staff and the number of students), staff with PhD (proportion of academic staff that have reach the highest level of qualification in their area of expertise), international research network (the richness of international research partners), web impact (the effective use of new technologies), and sustainability (the social and environmental impact of universities).

It is important to note that SU does not actively participate in the QS rankings and does not provide data. Forty percent of the QS WUR: Sub-Saharan Africa is based on surveys (employer reputation 20% and academic reputation 20%).

Earlier this year, SU featured among the top universities globally on the Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings (WUR) by Subject and TIME magazine and Statista R’s inaugural “World’s Top Universities of 2026” Ranking. Over the last few years, SU has been consistently ranked among the best tertiary institutions in the world on major international university rankings.