Average BMI in Burkina Faso
Men in Burkina Faso have an average BMI of 22.3, women 22.1. Both means fall in the WHO healthy weight band for men and healthy weight for women. That puts Burkina Faso 174th of 186 countries in our data, ranked from highest BMI to lowest.
Key numbers
Advertisement
Estimated share in each WHO category
Columns may not sum to 100 because of rounding. Real BMI distributions have a longer right tail than a normal curve, so the obese share here is probably a few points low.
Burkina Faso among its neighbours
What a given BMI means in Burkina Faso
Read it as: a man with BMI 30 in Burkina Faso has a higher BMI than 92% of men. Values under 1% or over 99% are shown as <1 and >99.
In plain language
The standard deviation for men in Burkina Faso is 5.5. About two thirds of men have a BMI between 16.8 and 27.8; for women the middle two thirds run from 15.9 to 28.3. Compared with the global mean, men here are 2.2 points lower and women 2.7 points lower.
BMI does not distinguish muscle from fat, and the WHO bands were set on European populations. For South and East Asian populations the same BMI carries more health risk, which is why several countries there use 23 and 27.5 as their own cut-offs.
Questions
- What is the average BMI in Burkina Faso?
- 22.3 for men and 22.1 for women, with standard deviations of 5.5 and 6.2. Averaged across the sexes that is 22.2, against a global figure of 24.6.
- What share of adults in Burkina Faso are overweight or obese?
- Our estimate from the mean and SD: 31% of men have a BMI of 25 or more, and 8% are at 30 or more. For women it is 32% and 10%. These assume a normal curve, so the true obesity shares are likely a few points higher.
- Is a BMI of 25 high in Burkina Faso?
- A BMI of 25 is the WHO line between healthy weight and overweight. In Burkina Faso it is higher than about 69% of men and 68% of women. For men here that is above the median, so it reads as slimmer than most.
- How does Burkina Faso compare with Cambodia?
- Men in Cambodia average 22.2 against 22.3 in Burkina Faso; women 22.4 against 22.1. Cambodia ranks 173rd, Burkina Faso 174th.
NCD-RisC does not publish standard deviations. SD for countries added in 2026-10 uses the global SD. Burkina Faso is one of them, so the SD, the category shares and the percentiles above use the global spread rather than one measured here.
Source: NCD Risk Factor Collaboration, Lancet 2017, age-standardised mean BMI for 2016. Percentiles on this page are our estimate from a normal distribution with the stated mean and SD.
Enter your height and weight and see your BMI percentile, globally or in one of the countries in the picker.
Check your BMIAlso by country: Average height by country and Life expectancy by country.