Average height in Malawi
Men in Malawi average 162.2 cm (5 ft 4 in), women 154.4 cm (5 ft 1 in). That puts Malawi 182nd of 186 countries in our data.
Key numbers
Advertisement
Malawi among its neighbours
What counts as tall in Malawi
Read it as: a man of 185 cm in Malawi is taller than >99% of men. Values under 1% or over 99% are shown as <1 and >99.
In plain language
The standard deviation for men in Malawi is 8.0 cm. In practice that means about two thirds of men stand between 154.2 and 170.2 cm, and roughly 95% between 146.2 and 178.2 cm. A man of 170 cm is taller than about 84% of men here; one of 178 cm is taller than about 98%.
Men in Malawi are on average 7.8 cm taller than women. Compared with the global mean, men here are 8.8 cm shorter and women 4.6 cm shorter. These are means for people born in 1996, measured at 18. Older generations in most countries are shorter, by several centimetres where heights rose fast.
Questions
- Is 180 cm tall in Malawi?
- A man of 180 cm (5 ft 11 in) is taller than about 99% of men in Malawi. That is clearly tall here. For a woman, 180 cm is taller than >99% of women in Malawi.
- What is the average height of women in Malawi?
- Women in Malawi average 154.4 cm (5 ft 1 in), with a standard deviation of 7.5 cm. About two thirds of women are between 146.9 and 161.9 cm. That ranks 163rd of 186 countries for women.
- How does Malawi compare to Nepal?
- Men in Nepal average 162.3 cm, 0.1 cm more than men in Malawi. Women average 150.9 cm against 154.4 cm. Nepal ranks 181st, Malawi 182nd.
- How does Malawi compare to the world average?
- The global mean is 171.0 cm for men and 159.0 cm for women. Men in Malawi are 8.8 cm shorter than that, women 4.6 cm shorter.
NCD-RisC does not publish standard deviations. SD for countries added in 2026-10 uses the global SD. Malawi is one of them, so the SD and the percentiles above use the global spread rather than one measured here.
Source: NCD Risk Factor Collaboration, eLife 2016, mean height at 18 of adults born in 1996. Percentiles on this page are our estimate from a normal distribution with the stated mean and SD.
Enter your height and see what share of men or women are shorter than you, globally or in one of the countries in the picker.
Check your heightAlso by country: Average BMI by country and Life expectancy by country.