Abstract: Software reuse yields benefits such as a reduction in the development time, cost and effort required and an increase in the productivity and quality. One of the ways to attain these reuse benefits is the use of components to develop software and is termed component-based software development. Reuse is facilitated by employing a systematic reuse methodology, such as is used with software product lines. Reusability is the degree to which software can be reused. Several approaches to assessing the reusability of software components have been proposed. Each is applicable to a specific programming language or paradigm. This study discusses the current state of the art of the reusability assessment of software components. The results of the review are categorized on the basis of the type of approach, the applicability and type of validation used to validate the approach. Moreover, the work attempts to highlight the applicability of available reusability assessment approaches with a view to identifying research gaps in this area.