Average height in Sierra Leone
Men in Sierra Leone average 164.4 cm (5 ft 5 in), women 156.6 cm (5 ft 2 in). That puts Sierra Leone 169th of 186 countries in our data.
Key numbers
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Sierra Leone among its neighbours
What counts as tall in Sierra Leone
Read it as: a man of 185 cm in Sierra Leone 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 Sierra Leone is 8.0 cm. In practice that means about two thirds of men stand between 156.4 and 172.4 cm, and roughly 95% between 148.4 and 180.4 cm. A man of 172 cm is taller than about 84% of men here; one of 180 cm is taller than about 98%.
Men in Sierra Leone are on average 7.8 cm taller than women. Compared with the global mean, men here are 6.6 cm shorter and women 2.4 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 Sierra Leone?
- A man of 180 cm (5 ft 11 in) is taller than about 97% of men in Sierra Leone. That is clearly tall here. For a woman, 180 cm is taller than >99% of women in Sierra Leone.
- What is the average height of women in Sierra Leone?
- Women in Sierra Leone average 156.6 cm (5 ft 2 in), with a standard deviation of 7.5 cm. About two thirds of women are between 149.1 and 164.1 cm. That ranks 137th of 186 countries for women.
- How does Sierra Leone compare to Myanmar?
- Men in Myanmar average 164.7 cm, 0.3 cm more than men in Sierra Leone. Women average 154.4 cm against 156.6 cm. Myanmar ranks 168th, Sierra Leone 169th.
- How does Sierra Leone compare to the world average?
- The global mean is 171.0 cm for men and 159.0 cm for women. Men in Sierra Leone are 6.6 cm shorter than that, women 2.4 cm shorter.
NCD-RisC does not publish standard deviations. SD for countries added in 2026-10 uses the global SD. Sierra Leone 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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