Based in the Province of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) is ranked within the top 2.4 – 3% of the World’s Universities by the Academic Ranking of World Universities, the QS World University Rankings, and The Times Higher Education Ranking; and 45th from a total of 700 universities, according to the Times Higher Education’s first ranking of BRICS and emerging economies universities. It caters for almost 40,000 students, and is one of the largest universities in sub-Saharan Africa. It has a long history of serving South Africa’s disadvantaged communities in terms of recruiting potential graduates and the research which is conducted at the university.
As one of South Africa’s pre-eminent research Universities, UKZN has invested millions of dollars to create a world-class scientific infrastructure. In the most recent (2014) evaluation by the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) in South Africa, UKZN had the most published output units in the country. This was the third consecutive year that UKZN had been the top publishing university. UKZN was followed by the University of Pretoria, the University of Cape Town, Stellenbosch University and the University of the Witwatersrand.
One of the reasons for UKZN’s research success is because it hosts a number of large research centres, which are funded by some of the most prestigious national and international funding agencies. These include CAPRISA (funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH)), the African Health Research Institute (AHRI) (funded by the Wellcome Trust & The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI)), the Antimicrobial Research Unit (ARU) (funded by the Department of Science and Technology (DST)) and the newly developed KwaZulu-Natal Research, Innovation and Sequencing Platform, a Genomics and Bioinformatics Centre, which is funded as a flagship programme of the Medical Research Council and since June 2017 co-funded by the Department of Science and Technology. All of these four research centres are based at the Nelson R Mandela School of Medicine, creating a scientific mass, which includes over 300 full time researchers.
In advancing its research agenda and inspiring greatness, UKZN has an intellectual property and knowledge-transfer office, InQubate, which acts as a hub for the growth of student entrepreneurship and industry-university collaborations. UKZN believes that their students are business leaders of tomorrow who have the potential of creating employment opportunities and contributing positively to the economic development of South Africa.
College of Health Sciences: The College of Health Sciences has led research in a myriad of health topics, including HIV, chronic diseases, early childhood intervention, health sciences education and training, women’s health and traditional medicine, and health systems strengthening research. The R40 million Doris Duke Medical Research Institute aimed at investigating diseases prevalent in Africa, and the Africa Centre for Health and Population Studies located in Mtubatuba, outside Durban, and the Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA) are affiliated to the College. The Faculty of Health Sciences also houses a Medical Education Partnership Initiative (MEPI) program, which has spun off into several other capacity building projects in research ethics (R25TW001599), informatics (D43TW007004), and leadership (D43TW010131) in health including health systems strengthening.