Average Height in Uganda (Men & Women)

How tall Ugandans are

Ugandan men born in 1996 average 165.6 cm (5′5″) and Ugandan women 156.7 cm (5′1½″), according to the NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC) estimates used across this site. Uganda ranks 172nd of 200 countries for men and 147th for women.

Uganda's story is one of the most striking in the global height data, for the wrong reason. Ugandans born in the mid-1950s were, among their immediate neighbors, second only to Kenyans in height. Those born four decades later are several centimeters shorter. Uganda is one of the countries the NCD-RisC researchers singled out when they reported that height had fallen in parts of sub-Saharan Africa. This guide covers the century of estimates, what Uganda's own measurement surveys show, child growth, and how Uganda compares with its neighbors.

About the estimates

Uganda's figures are NCD-RisC estimates of average height at age 18 for each birth year, modeled from measured heights only. They trace a rise and fall: Ugandan men went from 162.2 cm in the 1896 cohort to 169.5 cm in the 1956 cohort, then down to 165.6 cm for those born in 1996, a reversal of almost 4 cm in two generations.

Each number describes a birth cohort. The 165.6 cm headline is for men born in 1996, who reached adulthood around 2014. In most countries, that would make them the tallest generation measured. In Uganda, it doesn't.

Rise and fall over a century

For the first 60 years of the series, Ugandan height rose steadily. Men born in 1956 were 7.3 cm taller than men born in 1896, and women 6.1 cm taller. Then it turned around. By the 1976 cohort, men had lost 0.7 cm and women 1.0 cm. By the 1996 cohort, men had lost 3.9 cm from their peak and women 3.0 cm.

The result is that Ugandan men born in 1996 are only 3.4 cm taller than men born in 1896, and women just 3.1 cm taller. Over the same century, average height rose by more than 10 cm in many countries.

Part of a wider pattern

The NCD-RisC paper found that adult height decreased or at best stayed the same in many sub-Saharan African countries for people born after the early 1960s, and listed Uganda among those where height fell by several centimeters from its peak. Our World in Data notes the same pattern: average male and female heights in sub-Saharan Africa have fallen since about 1970, even as some health and nutrition indicators improved.

Why this happened is not settled in the sources reviewed for this page. Our World in Data explains that adult height reflects nutrition and disease in childhood, particularly in the first two years of life, when most stunting occurs. A falling average implies that, for children born from the 1960s through the 1990s, conditions for growth worsened or failed to keep pace. Among the paper's references is a study of nutritional status and economic development in sub-Saharan Africa between 1950 and 1980.

Uganda's 2014 STEPS survey

Uganda's most detailed recent source on adult height is the Non-Communicable Disease Risk Factor Baseline Survey, carried out by the Ministry of Health between March and July 2014, using the WHO STEPS method. A multi-stage cluster sample was designed to represent adults aged 18 to 69 nationally. The survey reached 3,987 household respondents, 1,604 men and 2,383 women, with a response rate of 99.0% for the interview and physical measurements. Results were weighted for age, sex and population size.

How height was measured

The report describes the method in detail. Participants stood barefoot with their back against a wall, heels together and head in the Frankfort position, and were asked to stretch to their full height. Height was read from a laser stadiometer built into a SECA 877 digital scale. If the laser failed, staff marked the height on the wall and measured it with a tape. Measurements were taken to the nearest 0.5 cm.

What it found

Overall, men averaged 166.9 cm and women 157.8 cm, within about 1.3 cm of the NCD-RisC estimates for the 1996 cohort. Pregnant women were excluded.

The age pattern is the most telling detail. In most countries, younger adults measure taller than older ones, because each generation has grown up in better conditions and older people lose a little height with age. In Uganda's survey, men aged 18 to 29 were 1.1 cm shorter than men aged 30 to 49 and 50 to 69. Women aged 18 to 29 were 1.3 cm shorter than women aged 30 to 49, and about the same as women aged 50 to 69. That is what you would expect if younger Ugandans genuinely grew up to be shorter, which matches the NCD-RisC trend.

How much weight to put on the age gap

A gap of about one centimeter between age groups is small, so it's worth checking the survey's own uncertainty ranges. The report gives a 95% confidence interval of 165.6 to 167.1 cm for men aged 18 to 29 and 166.6 to 168.2 cm for men aged 30 to 49. The ranges overlap slightly, so the survey alone can't prove the younger men are shorter. For women, the intervals are 156.6 to 158.1 cm for ages 18 to 29 and 158.0 to 159.2 cm for ages 30 to 49, which barely touch.

What makes the finding persuasive is not any single comparison but the agreement between sources: a national measurement survey, using a laser stadiometer and a standard protocol, shows younger adults no taller and probably slightly shorter than older ones, exactly the direction the NCD-RisC model estimates from a much larger body of data. The oldest age group, 50 to 69, is also the smallest in the survey, with 259 men and 414 women measured, so its averages carry the widest uncertainty.

Weight and body mass

The same survey found men averaged 60.9 kg and women 58.5 kg. Average body mass index was 21.7 for men and 23.4 for women. Overweight was recorded in 14.5% of participants (19.5% of women and 9.5% of men), and obesity in 7.5% of women and 1.8% of men.

Very short stature is rare

Despite the decline in average height, very short adult stature remains uncommon. Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) record the share of adults under 145 cm (4′9″):

These shares are low by the standards of many countries, and they haven't risen. A fall in the average combined with very few extremely short adults suggests a broad, modest downward shift across the population rather than a growing group of very short people.

Our World in Data highlights another feature of Ugandan height: its spread. It notes that Uganda had a wider distribution of heights than Togo, even though the two countries had similar averages. A wide spread means more variation between individuals, which can reflect unequal conditions in childhood. The same source notes that in neighboring Kenya, height inequality moved in step with changes in income inequality.

Child growth is improving

The best leading indicator of future adult height is how well children grow now. Here the news for Uganda is better.

Stunting among children under 5, meaning low height for their age, fell from almost half of children in the mid-1990s to under 30% by 2016. World Bank figures continue the series at 23.9% in 2018, 25.4% in 2020 and 24.4% in 2022, a plateau after a long decline.

Children who were under 5 in 1995 were born around 1990 to 1995, so the high stunting of that period fits the short stature of the 1996 NCD-RisC cohort. If the lower stunting rates of the 2010s hold, Ugandans born in the 2010s may grow up taller than their parents, reversing the trend. This site's data stop at people born in 1996, so that future change isn't yet visible here.

Uganda and its neighbors

Ugandan men born in 1996 are 4.0 cm shorter than Kenyan men and 1.2 cm shorter than men in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, but 0.8 cm taller than Tanzanian men. Ugandan women are 1.5 cm shorter than Kenyan women but taller than women in the DR Congo, Tanzania and Rwanda.

A decline shared across the region

Uganda's fall is the largest among its neighbors for men, but every country in the table shows the same shape: a peak for people born in the 1950s or 1970s, followed by a decline.

Rwanda's decline is slightly larger than Uganda's, and Kenya's and Tanzania's smaller. Because the pattern is so consistent across East Africa, explanations that apply only to Uganda are unlikely to account for all of it. That fits the NCD-RisC finding that stagnation and decline were widespread across sub-Saharan Africa for cohorts born after the early 1960s.

The comparison with Kenya is worth a closer look. In the NCD-RisC series, Ugandan men born in 1956 averaged 169.5 cm. Kenyan men born in 1996 average 169.6 cm, about the same as Ugandans born 40 years earlier. Uganda's men have fallen behind their neighbors largely because of their own decline.

Practical context

An average Ugandan man born in 1996 stands about 5′5″, and an average Ugandan woman about 5′1½″, close to the 5′2″ page. The STEPS survey suggests the average across all adults aged 18 to 69 is a little higher, around 167 cm for men and 158 cm for women, because older generations are slightly taller.

To see how your height compares with Ugandan men or women born in 1996, use the height percentile calculator. For all 200 countries, see the average height hub.