Average BMI in Namibia
Men in Namibia have an average BMI of 23.1, women 25.5. Both means fall in the WHO healthy weight band for men and overweight for women. That puts Namibia 131st of 186 countries in our data, ranked from highest BMI to lowest.
Key numbers
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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.
Namibia among its neighbours
What a given BMI means in Namibia
Read it as: a man with BMI 30 in Namibia has a higher BMI than 90% of men. Values under 1% or over 99% are shown as <1 and >99.
In plain language
The standard deviation for men in Namibia is 5.5. About two thirds of men have a BMI between 17.6 and 28.6; for women the middle two thirds run from 19.3 to 31.7. Compared with the global mean, men here are 1.4 points lower and women 0.7 points higher.
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 Namibia?
- 23.1 for men and 25.5 for women, with standard deviations of 5.5 and 6.2. Averaged across the sexes that is 24.3, against a global figure of 24.6.
- What share of adults in Namibia are overweight or obese?
- Our estimate from the mean and SD: 36% of men have a BMI of 25 or more, and 10% are at 30 or more. For women it is 53% and 23%. These assume a normal curve, so the true obesity shares are likely a few points higher.
- Is a BMI of 25 high in Namibia?
- A BMI of 25 is the WHO line between healthy weight and overweight. In Namibia it is higher than about 64% of men and 47% of women. For men here that is above the median, so it reads as slimmer than most.
- How does Namibia compare with Cameroon?
- Men in Cameroon average 23.7 against 23.1 in Namibia; women 25.2 against 25.5. Cameroon ranks 130th, Namibia 131st.
NCD-RisC does not publish standard deviations. SD for countries added in 2026-10 uses the global SD. Namibia 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.
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Check your BMIAlso by country: Average height by country and Life expectancy by country.