Average Height in Somalia (Men & Women)

Somalia's average height

Somalia sits in the middle of the African height range. In the NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC) estimates used on this site, Somali men born in 1996 average 166.6 cm (5′6″) and Somali women 156.1 cm (5′1″). Globally, men rank 162nd of 200 countries and women 157th. Within Africa, men rank 36th and women 40th of 53 countries.

These values describe a birth cohort: people born in one year and measured as adults. NCD-RisC pooled 1,472 population-based studies covering more than 18.6 million people, using only measured heights. Its Bayesian model shares information among countries in the same region, which allows estimates even where national surveys are scarce. The paper is open about the cost: where data are limited, uncertainty is larger. To compare any height with Somali averages, use the height percentile calculator.

A data caveat: Somalia and Djibouti

Somalia is a clear example of that limitation. Its estimates are almost identical to those for neighboring Djibouti in every cohort of the century, to within 0.1 cm. In 1996 both countries show men at 166.6 cm and women at 156.1 cm. That pattern most likely reflects how heavily the model relies on regional information for both countries, rather than a real biological match. The Somali figures should be treated as a regional estimate with a margin of a few centimeters.

Somalia's long history of conflict has made data collection hard. A 2026 study of child stunting in Somalia notes that conventional surveys there often face logistical and security barriers, leading to significant data gaps, and that model-based estimates are used to fill them.

A century of rise and decline

Somali heights rose through the first half of the century. Men gained 6.8 cm between the 1896 and 1956 cohorts and women 6.0 cm. Then the trend turned:

• Women peaked with the 1956 cohort at 157.8 cm and have since lost 1.7 cm.
• Men peaked with the 1976 cohort at 168.7 cm and have since lost 2.1 cm.

Over the full century, Somali men are 5.2 cm taller and women 4.3 cm taller than in 1896, but almost half of the mid-century gains have been lost.

The roughly 10 cm gap between men and women is typical of the region. Our World in Data notes that the gap in mean height between the sexes is smallest across sub-Saharan Africa.

Why heights fell: the regional picture

Somalia's decline matches a pattern across much of sub-Saharan Africa. The NCD-RisC paper reports that adult height decreased or at best stayed the same in many countries there for cohorts born after the early 1960s, by around 5 cm from the peak in some. It also notes that childhood stunting in sub-Saharan Africa kept rising until the mid-1990s. NCD-RisC's 2020 study in The Lancet found that the height of children and adolescents, especially boys, had stagnated or fallen since 1985 in many sub-Saharan countries.

Researchers have proposed several explanations:

• Survival without better nutrition. Y. Akachi and D. Canning, in Economics and Human Biology (2010), found that infant mortality in sub-Saharan Africa fell after 1961 while adult heights did not increase. They argued that the fall may have come from interventions that prevent infant deaths rather than from improved nutrition and less childhood illness.
• Selective survival. Our World in Data describes the possibility that as fewer of the most malnourished children die, more stunted children survive to adulthood, lowering the average height of each cohort even as health improves.

For Somalia specifically, the 2026 stunting study points to protracted conflict, recurring droughts and floods, and widespread food insecurity as the context for childhood malnutrition.

Childhood stunting today

Stunting, meaning height more than two standard deviations below the World Health Organization standard for a child's age, is the main modern indicator of the conditions that shape adult height.

National trend

WHO modeled estimates, analyzed by A. S. Ali and A. Osborne in the Journal of Epidemiology and Global Health in 2026, show steady improvement:

Stunting fell by 9.7 percentage points over 24 years. The authors describe the remaining level as a medium-to-high public health concern and stress the wide uncertainty of the estimates in a conflict-affected setting: the 2024 range for boys runs from about 16% to 39%. They also cite the 2019 Somalia Micronutrient Survey, which found a lower stunting prevalence of 17.2% among children under 5.

Boys more affected than girls

Throughout 2000–2024, boys were consistently more likely to be stunted than girls. In 2024 the estimates were 25.7% for boys and 22.0% for girls, a ratio that barely changed over the period. The authors call for nutrition programs that take this difference into account.

Somaliland surveys

Two analyses of the 2020 Somaliland Health and Demographic Survey give direct survey figures for Somaliland:

• One study reported 24.99% of children under 5 stunted, with higher odds of stunting in Sool and Sanaag than in Awdal, and higher odds in rural areas.
• Another, using a weighted sample of 3,240 children, found 23.4% stunted and linked improved sanitation to lower odds of stunting.

Both figures are close to the WHO national estimate for 2020, which gives some confidence in the overall level.

The Somaliland studies also point to everyday conditions behind the numbers. In the first, children in rural areas had about 1.7 times the odds of being stunted as urban children, and wasting was more common where households had no water at the handwashing point or used ash or mud instead of soap. In the second, households with improved sanitation had about 30% lower odds of a stunted child, and the authors called for better sanitation and water access to reduce undernutrition.

Why early childhood matters for adult height

Our World in Data explains that stunting typically develops in the first two years of life, when growth is fastest and nutrition is most critical. There is also evidence that "catch-up growth," faster than normal growth after a period of restriction, is possible when conditions improve. That is why falling stunting rates are the most hopeful sign in Somalia's data: children who escape stunting in infancy are more likely to reach their full adult height, and the cohorts now being born could eventually reverse some of the decline seen in recent adults.

What Somalia's national survey measured

The Somali Health and Demographic Survey (SHDS) 2020 is a nationally representative survey. According to a 2026 analysis in the International Journal of Women's Health, it selected 16,360 households across urban, rural and nomadic strata, with a separate design for nomadic households, and successfully interviewed 15,761. It measured the height and weight of women aged 15 to 49.

That analysis, covering 14,460 women with valid measurements, reported body-mass index rather than average height. It found 46% of women at a normal BMI, 13.6% underweight, 30.5% overweight and 9.8% obese, with overweight more common in wealthier households and underweight more common in poorer ones. The authors note that in some Somali communities, being overweight is traditionally viewed as a sign of prosperity.

The analysis also found that underweight was associated with never having been married and not being the head of the household, while overweight and obesity rose with household wealth and age. Taken together, the figures show Somali women facing both undernutrition and a growing problem of excess weight, a pattern the authors attribute partly to economic and social disparities.

The SHDS height data have not yet been widely used to publish a national average for women. When they are, they will offer a direct check on the NCD-RisC estimate, which is currently built largely on regional information.

Somalia in the world

Somalia's averages look modest next to Europe, but they are far from the bottom of the world table. In the 1996 cohort, 37 countries have shorter men than Somalia and 43 have shorter women. Somali men (166.6 cm) are taller than men in India (164.9 cm) and Bangladesh (163.8 cm), and Somali women (156.1 cm) are 3.5 cm taller than women in India (152.6 cm) and 6.7 cm taller than women in Guatemala (149.4 cm), the shortest in the world. Somali women are within a centimeter of women in Mexico (156.8 cm).

The century-long gain is a different story. Somali men gained 5.2 cm between the 1896 and 1996 cohorts, against a gain of more than 10 cm in most of Europe and 16.5 cm for Iranian men, the largest male gain in the NCD-RisC study. Somalia's position in the world table has therefore slipped, from 119th of 200 for men born in 1896 to 162nd for men born in 1996, even though Somalis are taller than their great-grandparents.

Somalia and its neighbors

Somalia, Djibouti and Ethiopia are within half a centimeter of each other for both sexes, and all three peaked at the same 168.7 cm for men in the 1976 cohort, another sign of how closely the model ties this region together. Kenya is about 3 cm taller for men and 2 cm for women. Yemen is shorter still, especially for men.

What Somali height means

An average Somali man at 166.6 cm is about 5′6″, and an average Somali woman at 156.1 cm is about 5′1″. A woman of 155 cm is right around the Somali average; see the 155 cm page to compare that height worldwide.

Somalia's height data carry more uncertainty than most, but the direction of the evidence is consistent: heights rose until the mid-20th century, slipped in later cohorts, and childhood stunting has been falling since 2000. To compare Somalia with any other country, visit the average height hub.