Average Height in Chad (Men & Women)

Chad's average height

Chad is one of the taller countries in Africa, but its people are shorter today than they were a generation or two ago. In the NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC) estimates used on this site, Chadian men born in 1996 average 170.4 cm (5′7″) and Chadian women 160.2 cm (5′3″). Men rank 106th of 200 countries and women 84th.

Within Africa, Chad stands out. Of the 53 African countries in the site's data, Chadian men rank 9th and Chadian women 10th. The 10.2 cm gap between men and women is small by global standards, which matches a pattern Our World in Data highlights: the gap in mean height between men and women is smallest across sub-Saharan Africa.

These values describe a birth cohort, people born in one year and measured as adults. NCD-RisC pooled 1,472 population-based studies with measured height on more than 18.6 million people and combined them in a statistical model. For countries with few surveys, the model borrows information from the surrounding region, and the paper notes that limited data mean wider uncertainty. Chad's estimates rest on fewer national surveys than those of most European countries, so they should be read as a well-informed range rather than an exact figure. To compare a specific height with Chadian averages, use the height percentile calculator.

A century of rise and decline

Chadian heights climbed steadily for the first half of the century. Men gained 7.3 cm between the 1896 and 1956 cohorts and women 6.9 cm. Then the direction changed:

• Women peaked with the 1956 cohort at 163.6 cm and have since lost 3.4 cm.
• Men peaked with the 1976 cohort at 173.0 cm and have since lost 2.6 cm.

Over the full century, Chadian men are still 5.5 cm taller and women 3.5 cm taller than in 1896, but much of the progress of the mid-20th century has been reversed. Among African countries in the site's data, the fall in Chadian women's height from their peak is the sixth largest, behind Benin, Madagascar, Niger, Rwanda and Zambia.

Because women's height fell earlier and further than men's, the gap between the sexes widened from about 8 cm to about 10 cm.

This has an unusual everyday consequence. In most countries, young adults are taller than their parents. In Chad, the estimates suggest the opposite: a man born in 1976, now around 50, was on average 2.6 cm taller than a man born in 1996, and Chadian women born in the 1950s were taller than their daughters' and granddaughters' generations. Any survey that measures adults of all ages in Chad will therefore mix taller older cohorts with shorter younger ones.

Part of a sub-Saharan pattern

Chad is not an isolated case. The NCD-RisC paper describes falling or flat adult height in many countries in sub-Saharan Africa for cohorts born after the early 1960s, by around 5 cm from the peak in some countries such as Niger, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Uganda. The authors also note that earlier research documented rising stunting among children in sub-Saharan Africa until the mid-1990s.

Our World in Data calls this pattern "particularly curious," because the region achieved progress on many other measures of well-being during the same period.

Two explanations researchers have offered

Health gains without better nutrition. In a 2010 paper in Economics and Human Biology, Y. Akachi and D. Canning looked at cohort infant mortality and adult height in 39 developing countries since 1961. In most regions, falling infant mortality and rising height went together. In sub-Saharan Africa, infant mortality fell but adult height did not rise. The authors argued that the decline in infant deaths there may have come from interventions that prevent infant deaths rather than from better nutrition and less childhood illness, so that children survived without growing better.

Selective survival. Our World in Data describes another possibility: when child mortality is high, the least healthy children, often those most stunted by malnutrition, do not survive to adulthood. The survivors are healthier and taller on average. As more vulnerable children survive, the average adult height of a cohort can fall even as health improves.

An earlier study by the same authors, in the Annals of Human Biology in 2007, built a database of women's height in 24 sub-Saharan countries for cohorts born between 1945 and 1985. It found that changes in height over time were sensitive to infant mortality, income and protein intake around birth and in adolescence, but that most of the difference between countries came from fixed factors the model could not explain.

What Chad's national health survey shows

Chad's national statistics institute (INSEED) and Ministry of Public Health conducted the EDS-MICS 2014–2015, part of the international Demographic and Health Surveys program. It measured the weight and height of women aged 15 to 49 who had given birth in the previous five years, as well as children under 5.

Very few short women

Only 0.6% of women were shorter than 145 cm, a common threshold for short maternal stature. Earlier DHS surveys in Chad found 0.2% in 1996–1997 and 0.3% in 2004. The proportion was slightly higher in some northern and eastern regions, such as Ennedi (2.6%), Ouaddaï (2.4%) and Borkou-Tibesti (2.3%), and close to zero in several southern regions.

For comparison, Guatemala's equivalent survey in 2014–2015 found that 25% of women were shorter than 145 cm. That contrast fits the NCD-RisC estimates, in which Chadian women are almost 11 cm taller than Guatemalan women.

Thin rather than short

Undernutrition in Chadian women shows up more in weight than in height. Their average body-mass index was 20.3 at ages 15–19 and 22.0 at 40–49. In the regions of Kanem (45.6%), Barh El Gazal (43.2%) and Lac (41.0%), more than two-fifths of women were classed as thin, with a BMI under 18.5. In N'Djaména, the capital, 28.5% of women were overweight or obese. NCD-RisC's 2020 study in The Lancet similarly lists Chad among the countries where 19-year-olds had the lowest average BMI in the world, about 21 kg/m² or lower.

Stunting among Chadian children

The same survey found that 40% of children under 5 were stunted, meaning their height was more than two standard deviations below the World Health Organization standard for their age: 18% moderately and 22% severely. In a healthy, well-nourished population, the report notes, those figures would be about 2.3% and 0.1%. The survey called the nutritional situation of Chadian children critical.

The survey report describes how stunting builds up with age:

It also found more stunting when births were closely spaced (48% when the previous birth was less than 24 months earlier, 34% at 48 months or more), when the child was small at birth, and when the mother was thin (47% against 38% for mothers of normal weight). The report stresses that most stunting accumulates before age 2 and is hard to reverse afterward.

Large regional differences

Stunting varied enormously across Chad. In Kanem, nearly two-thirds of children under 5 were stunted (64%) and 42% severely. Lac (57%), Barh El Gazal (56%), Wadi Fira (52%) and Mayo Kebbi Ouest (50%) also had at least one stunted child in two. At the other end, Mandoul (28%), Moyen Chari (27%), Logone Oriental and Logone Occidental (30% each) and N'Djaména (30%) had levels the report described as medium rather than critical.

The regions where children were most often stunted were also among those where women were most often thin. Rural children were more often stunted than urban children (42% against 32%), boys slightly more than girls (41% against 39%), and severe stunting was twice as common when the mother had no schooling as when she had secondary education (25% against 12%).

Progress since 2000

National DHS surveys found 44.5% of children stunted in 1996–1997 and 39.9% in 2014–2015. WHO modeled estimates show a steadier decline, from 42.2% in 2000 to 31.5% in 2024. If those gains hold, the children growing up now may eventually reverse some of the decline seen in recent adult cohorts.

A 2026 study in Maternal & Child Nutrition that pooled DHS data from 19 sub-Saharan countries, with Chad contributing 9.4% of the sample, focused on how maternal height under 145 cm relates to child stunting. It treats maternal height as a marker of the mother's own early-life nutrition, one route through which stunting is passed between generations.

Chad and its neighbors

Chad is taller than all of its southern and eastern neighbors, by 2.6 cm over Cameroon and Niger and 3.8 cm over Sudan for men. Only Libya, to the north, is taller. Compare the full trends on the Nigeria page, where height has also fallen in recent cohorts.

What Chadian height means

An average Chadian man at 170.4 cm is about 5′7″, and an average Chadian woman at 160.2 cm is about 5′3″. A man of 170 cm is right at the Chadian average; see the 170 cm page to compare that height worldwide.

Chad's story is one of solid gains in the first half of the 20th century followed by a decline that researchers still struggle to explain fully. With childhood stunting now falling, the next generation of adults may tell a different story. Compare Chad with any other country in the average height hub.