By Jan Puhl. Ibrahim also created a foundation which releases an annual ranking of good and bad governance among African nations, based on a number of indicators. Free and fair elections garner positive points, for example, while corruption lowers a country's ranking. The foundation also presents the annual Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership, which awards $5 million to a commendable African politician. This year, though, for the second year in a row, the jury found no one it considered worthy of receiving the prize. More...

In the latest edition of the QS World University Rankings®, there are 47 ranked universities in the regions of Africa and the Middle East, split between 14 different countries. Some nations, however, boast more entries than others; the country with the largest rankings presence is Turkey with nine offerings, despite no entries within the top 400. Tied with seven ranked universities each are South Africa and Saudi Arabia, although South Africa appears higher up, with the regions’ second highest ranking. Israel, despite its miniscule size in relation to its competitors, has five ranked universities, four of which are impressively included within the top 10 universities in Africa and the Middle East.
Here’s a closer look at those 10 top universities in Africa and the Middle East, followed by a comprehensive ‘Best of the Rest’, which gives a deserved mention to all the African and Middle Eastern countries included within the QS rankings.
Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel 
Located in Israel, the world’s only Jewish-majority state, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem is the highest ranked of these top universities in Africa and the Middle East. The university is ranked 141= in the world and counts among its founders the likes of Nobel Prize laureate Albert Einstein, who served on the first Board of Governors alongside Sigmund Freud. The school has three campuses in Jerusalem and one in Rehovot, and is home to the world’s largest Jewish studies library. The university is also well reputed in mathematics and has been awarded a Fields Medal in the subject. More...

By Marc Mcilhone. “We consider the African Virtual University (AVU) Project very critical to the effort to improve access to higher education in Africa and are pleased to learn that the deliberations on the integration of e-learning and open education into mainstream education programs was fruitful,” concluded Stefan Muller, Lead Economist of the African Development Bank’s (AfDB) East Africa Regional Resource Center (EARC) during the first international conference African Virtual University organized from November 20-22, 2013 in Nairobi. Under the topic “Integrating eLearning and Open Education to Increase Access to Quality Education and Training”, the conference brought together more than 100 participants including Ministries of Education and 22 universities from the Multinational AVU support project** as well as the private sector. The main objective of this first gathering was to discuss the future of e-learning in Africa and the role of Open Education Resources (OERs) including the Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) in the ICT learning revolution.