Njala University Tops Sierra Leone’s 2026 AD Scientific Index Rankings

The latest national rankings released by the AD Scientific Index show that Njala University has emerged as the top university in Sierra Leone for 2026.

According to the ranking, Njala University claims the country’s #1 spot based on the research performance of its academic staff.

In second place is University of Management and Technology (UNIMTECH), while University of Sierra Leone ranks third nationally. This ordering reflects the contribution of each institution’s researchers to SCI-indexed publications, citations, and academic influence as measured by AD Scientific Index metrics  including the H-index, i10-index, and citation counts, evaluated both over researchers’ full careers and the past five years.

The AD Scientific Index bases its institutional rankings on a “bottom-up” model: the performance of individual scientists aggregated by university. It considers six core bibliometric indicators: total H-index, recent (last 5 years) H-index, total i10-index, recent i10-index, total citations, and recent citations.

Rather than relying on reputation surveys or subjective judgments, the Index uses publicly available data (e.g. from Google Scholar), aiming for transparency, reproducibility and fairness across all countries and disciplines.

These rankings spotlight universities in Sierra Leone that are making the greatest contributions to research output demonstrating both long-term scholarly influence and recent momentum. For prospective students, academics, policymakers and funders, the results may help identify institutions offering strong research environments.

For Njala University and UNIMTECH especially, the high ranking may enhance their national and regional visibility, possibly supporting efforts to attract research funding, collaborations, and top students.

At the same time, the results may encourage other institutions to invest more in research capacity, support faculty scholarship, and strengthen academic output potentially raising the overall research profile of higher education in Sierra Leone.