In this paper, we estimate the return to higher education for 12 African countries using recent data and a variety of methods. Importantly, one of our methods adjusts for the effect of higher education on the rate of joblessness, which is substantial in most African countries, and particularly for women. Our results confirm that Mincerian coefficients cannot be interpreted as a true rate of return, and that the latter (even after taking into account the employment effect) is considerably lower than what has previously been suggested in the literature (less than half). For Sub-Saharan Africa, we also uncover an interesting relationship between a country’s level of education and the return to higher education: contrary to expectations, we find that in countries where a high proportion of the working age population is educated to tertiary level, the return to higher education is highest.