Average height in Namibia
Men in Namibia average 167.0 cm (5 ft 6 in), women 158.8 cm (5 ft 3 in). That puts Namibia 139th of 186 countries in our data.
Key numbers
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Namibia among its neighbours
What counts as tall in Namibia
Read it as: a man of 185 cm in Namibia 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 Namibia is 8.0 cm. In practice that means about two thirds of men stand between 159.0 and 175.0 cm, and roughly 95% between 151.0 and 183.0 cm. A man of 175 cm is taller than about 84% of men here; one of 183 cm is taller than about 98%.
Men in Namibia are on average 8.2 cm taller than women. Compared with the global mean, men here are 4.0 cm shorter and women 0.2 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 Namibia?
- A man of 180 cm (5 ft 11 in) is taller than about 95% of men in Namibia. That is clearly tall here. For a woman, 180 cm is taller than >99% of women in Namibia.
- What is the average height of women in Namibia?
- Women in Namibia average 158.8 cm (5 ft 3 in), with a standard deviation of 7.5 cm. About two thirds of women are between 151.3 and 166.3 cm. That ranks 95th of 186 countries for women.
- How does Namibia compare to Ecuador?
- Men in Ecuador average 167.1 cm, 0.1 cm more than men in Namibia. Women average 154.2 cm against 158.8 cm. Ecuador ranks 138th, Namibia 139th.
- How does Namibia compare to the world average?
- The global mean is 171.0 cm for men and 159.0 cm for women. Men in Namibia are 4.0 cm shorter than that, women 0.2 cm shorter.
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 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.
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