Median age in Nigeria
The median age in Nigeria is 17.9 years (2024): half the population is older, half younger. That is 12.7 years younger than the world median of 30.6, and makes Nigeria the 175th oldest of 193 countries.
Key numbers
Nigeria among its neighbours
In plain language
Line up everyone in Nigeria by age. The person in the middle is 17.9. That is the median: it says nothing about how old the oldest are or how many babies were born last year, only where the midpoint falls.
A median of 17.9 is younger than the world's 30.6. For scale, the youngest country here, Central African Republic, has a median of 14.4 and the oldest, Japan, 49.4. Life expectancy at birth in Nigeria is 54.5 years, so a person at the median age has, on a rough reckoning, about 36.6 years ahead of them.
The 2024figure is the UN's medium-variant number; its estimates end in 2023. For a year this close the projection barely differs from an estimate, since everyone counted has already been born.
Questions
- What is the median age in Nigeria?
- 17.9 years in 2024, by the UN World Population Prospects 2024. Half of the people in Nigeria are younger than 17.9 and half are older. The median is not the average age; it is the midpoint, so a handful of very old people do not move it.
- Is Nigeria's population young or old?
- Young. Nigeria is 12.7 years below the world median of 30.6, and ranks 175th oldest of the 193 countries here. The youngest country, Central African Republic, has a median of 14.4; the oldest, Japan, 49.4.
- How does Nigeria compare to Cameroon?
- Cameroon has a median age of 17.9, 0.0 years older than Nigeria. The two sit next to each other in the ranking, at 19th and 18th youngest.
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