The sixth edition of QS World University Rankings by Subject has placed the University of Nairobi in the 51-100 category for Development Studies.

The university of Nairobi is the pioneer university in Kenya. It was established back in 1956 as the Royal Technical College which later transformed to Royal College Nairobi awarding University of London degrees.

It has a well-established institute for development studies (IDS) - ids.uonbi.ac.ke which is one of the olderst and well established research institutes in Africa