Univrsity of South Africa (UNISA)

Founded in 26 june, 1873, The University of South Africa is the largest university on the African continent and attracts a third of all higher education students in South Africa. It is located at Pretoria, Gauteng, South Africa Unisa is South Africa’s oldest university and the longest standing dedicated distance education university in the world. In the beginning it is known as the University of the Cape of Good Hope, the institution became a federal university in 1918, and in 1946 it became the first public university in the world to teach exclusively by means of distance education. The federal university was the examining body for seven constituent institutions, which today comprise most of South Africa’s historically ‘white’ universities. It could therefore be claimed that Unisa is also the primogenitor of a number of South Africa’s current universities.

The past one-and-a-half centuries in South Africa have been signified by specific seminal moments in its history, activities that have irrevocably changed the course of events in the country and indeed the world. These include the Anglo-Boer War in 1910, the First and Second World Wars, the assumption of power of the nationalist government in 1948, the advent of democracy and the ANC government in 1994, and the complete reconfiguration of the higher education landscape in 2001 from which the new Unisa emerged in 2004 as South Africa’s single, dedicated, comprehensive distance education institution (amalgamating the old Unisa, Technikon Southern Africa and the Vista University for Distance Education Campus).
The University of South Africa is now ranked the 13th best University in South Africa by the Times Higher Education. Making the university the 13th best university in Africa out of 30 universities in Africa in 2015.