Average Height in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Men & Women)

Average height in the DR Congo today

Adults in the Democratic Republic of the Congo born in 1996 average 166.8 cm (5′6″) for men and 155.2 cm (5′1″) for women, according to the NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC). These are the figures used on this page and across the site. The gap between the sexes is 11.6 cm.

The DR Congo has 26 provinces with very different living conditions, from the capital, Kinshasa, to the eastern Kivu provinces. A single national average hides a lot. So this page combines the long-run NCD-RisC estimates with what the country's own Demographic and Health Surveys (EDS-RDC) measured in 2013–2014 and 2023–2024.

Among 200 countries in the NCD-RisC data, Congolese men born in 1996 rank around 155th and women around 167th. That puts both in the shorter third of the world.

How these estimates are made

NCD-RisC pooled 1,472 population-based studies with height measurements for more than 18.6 million people. Self-reported heights were excluded, and every data source was checked by at least two members of the analysis group. A statistical model then estimated average adult height for each birth year from 1896 to 1996 in each country.

The "born in 1996" figure therefore refers to people who reached adulthood around 2014. It is not the average of everyone alive today. Older Congolese, born in the 1960s and 1970s, were estimated to be taller, as the next section shows.

The model has a hierarchical structure, so countries with fewer national surveys, such as the DR Congo, lean more on regional patterns, so the uncertainty around each estimate is wider than for a country like Germany or the United Kingdom with decades of measurement. NCD-RisC publishes credible intervals for that reason.

A century of height in the DR Congo

The first half of the century brought real gains. Men born in 1956 were more than 7 cm taller than those born in 1896, and women gained a similar amount. According to the year-by-year NCD-RisC series published by Our World in Data, men peaked with the 1969 cohort at about 169.8 cm, and women with the 1962 cohort at about 158.6 cm.

After that, the estimates turn down. Men born in 1996 are about 3 cm shorter than the peak cohort, and women about 3.4 cm shorter. The NCD-RisC paper describes height gains that stopped early in South Asia and "reversed in Africa." It ties the African reversal to childhood stunting in sub-Saharan Africa, which rose until the mid-1990s, and suggests that childhood adversity was carried forward into adult height.

Childhood stunting: the link to adult height

Stunting means a child is more than two standard deviations shorter than the World Health Organization growth standard for their age. The EDS-RDC report describes it as a marker of the poor growth environment children have been exposed to, caused by inadequate nutrition, repeated infections, chronic illness and other factors.

These figures, from The DHS Program's database, have barely moved in 16 years. Nearly half of young Congolese children are shorter than the international standard. Unlike in neighboring Kenya or Tanzania, where stunting has fallen steeply in recent surveys, the DR Congo shows no clear improvement. That matters for the future: children stunted in the 2010s and 2020s will be the adults of the 2030s and 2040s. Without change, the downward trend in adult height is unlikely to reverse soon.

The 2023–2024 survey also measured adolescents. Sixteen percent of girls aged 15–19 had short stature for their age.

Very short adults: what the EDS-RDC measured

Demographic and Health Surveys use 145 cm as a cutoff for short stature in women, because very short women face a higher risk of difficult deliveries. The 2013–2014 report notes that the threshold at which a woman is at risk varies between populations, but is generally put between 140 and 150 cm.

Nationally, 5.0 percent of women aged 15–49 were shorter than 145 cm in 2013–2014, and 3.9 percent of women aged 20–49 in 2023–2024. Among men, The DHS Program records 2.1 percent below 145 cm in the latest survey. These shares are small, but they vary a lot from place to place.

Provinces with the highest and lowest shares

The pattern was similar a decade earlier. In 2013–2014, under the old provincial boundaries, Sud-Kivu (11.3 percent), Maniema (10.7 percent) and Nord-Kivu (9.4 percent) had the highest shares, and Kinshasa the lowest (0.6 percent). The eastern provinces stand out in both surveys.

Comparing the two surveys fairly

It's tempting to read the drop from 5.0 percent to 3.9 percent as progress, but the two figures aren't measured on the same basis. The 2013–2014 report counts women aged 15–49, while the 2023–2024 report counts women aged 20–49 and treats adolescents separately. Girls aged 15–19 had the highest share of very short stature in 2013–2014, so leaving them out lowers the later figure on its own. The DHS Program's harmonized database, which uses a consistent definition, has 4.0 percent for the 2007 survey and 4.3 percent for 2023–2024. On a like-for-like basis, nothing changed.

The map changed too. The 2013–2014 survey reported 11 provinces, while the 2023–2024 survey reported the 26 provinces in use today. Only a few names, such as Kinshasa, Maniema, Nord-Kivu and Sud-Kivu, appear in both tables. Province-level comparisons across the two surveys only work when the new provinces are grouped back into the old ones.

Younger women are more often very short

One detail in the survey tables lines up with the NCD-RisC decline. If each generation were taller than the last, the share of women under 145 cm should be lowest among the youngest. In the DR Congo it isn't.

Some girls aged 15–19 are still growing, so their figure overstates the gap. But women aged 20–29, who had mostly finished growing, were still more likely to be very short than women in their thirties. In 2023–2024 the shares were flat across age groups: 4.0 percent at 20–29 and 30–39 and 3.5 percent at 40–49. The surveys can't say why on their own. But they give no sign that younger Congolese women are growing taller than their mothers, which is what you'd see in a country where adult height was rising.

Urban, rural, schooling and wealth

The same surveys show clear social gradients:

• Urban vs rural: 1.7 percent of urban women were under 145 cm in 2023–2024, against 5.3 percent of rural women.
• Education: 6.8 percent of women with no schooling were under 145 cm, against 1.0 percent of women with higher education.
• Wealth: 5.2 percent of women in the poorest fifth of households were under 145 cm, and 0.7 percent in the richest fifth.

Our World in Data points out that the spread of heights within a population is partly a measure of inequality. If everyone had equal access to food and health care, height differences would mostly reflect genes. The Congolese surveys show that access is far from equal.

Body size beyond height

The same household visits that measure height also record weight, so the surveys show body mass index (BMI) next to stature. In 2013–2014 Congolese women aged 15–49 had an average BMI of 21.9, and about 70 percent were in the normal range of 18.5 to 24.9. By 2023–2024, among women aged 20–49, 13 percent were classed as thin, 15 percent as overweight and 8 percent as obese.

Thinness was nearly as common as overweight, so undernutrition still shows up in both height and weight. Women in Kinshasa had the highest average BMI in 2023–2024 (25.7), and women in Kwango, one of the provinces with many very short women, had among the lowest (19.3). Short stature and thinness tend to occur in the same places, which is what you'd expect if both come from limited food and frequent illness.

How Congolese surveys measure height

The EDS-RDC teams weigh people on digital SECA scales and measure them with ShorrBoard wooden boards, the same equipment used in DHS surveys worldwide. The 2023–2024 report is unusually open about practical problems. During measurement, 19 percent of women had hairstyles or ornaments that interfered with height, and 3 percent were not wearing light clothing or wore heavy permanent garments. Recording those details lets analysts judge how far measured heights may be off.

This is the kind of measured data that NCD-RisC relies on. A health survey that asks people their height would be much less reliable. NCD-RisC states that the removal of shoes is part of standard survey protocol and that self-report is the single biggest source of bias in adult height data.

The DR Congo compared with its neighbors

Congolese men are close to the regional middle. Congolese women are among the shorter in the group, behind women in the Republic of the Congo and Angola by around 2 cm. Every country in the table followed the same arc in the NCD-RisC data: a rise through the mid-20th century followed by a decline for the youngest cohorts. In Rwanda, men born in 1996 are 4.4 cm shorter than those born in 1956.

Putting the numbers to use

A typical young Congolese man is around 5′6″ and a typical young woman around 5′1″. To compare a specific height with these averages, try the height percentile calculator, or place two figures side by side in the height comparison tool. The average height hub has every country on the same NCD-RisC basis, which makes cross-border comparisons fair.

What to watch next

The DR Congo's height data raise two questions that future surveys could answer. First, will the latest cohorts of adults confirm the fall that NCD-RisC estimates? The 2023–2024 survey measured thousands of women and men, so the next pooled analysis will have more Congolese data than the 2016 study did. Second, can the gap between the eastern provinces and Kinshasa narrow? With stunting still near 45 percent nationally, the evidence so far suggests that adult heights will improve only when childhood nutrition does.