Child Welfare · Africa ranking
Overweight Children by African country
Lesotho has the highest overweight prevalence among children under 5 of any African country, at 7.7% — 1.8× Zimbabwe's 4.3%.
Share of children under 5 who are overweight (weight-for-height above two standard deviations). 6 of 54 countries, ranked · World Bank — World Development Indicators, 2024.
Latest available year varies by country (2023–2024). Only observations within 2 years of the freshest result are included, and each row shows its period.
Lesotho
Zimbabwe
DjiboutiBy region
Full ranking
| # | Country | Overweight Children | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Lesotho | 7.7% | |
| 2 | Zimbabwe | 4.3% | |
| 3 | Djibouti | 4.2% | |
| 4 | Democratic Republic of the Congo | 3.8% | |
| 5 | Mali | 1.4% | |
| 6 | Senegal | 1.1% |
Democratic Republic of the Congo
Mali
SenegalGet this ranking via API
One call to /v1/data returns the latest Overweight Children figure for every country you pass — JSON, with source metadata on each observation.
curl "https://api.africa-api.com/v1/data?metric_key=child_overweight_pct&latest=true&country_codes=NG,KE,ZA,EG" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $AFRICA_API_KEY"Cite or republish this ranking
Data: Africa API — World Bank — World Development Indicators, 2024. Free to republish with a link to this page. Pull the live figures via the API above so your version never goes stale.
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Frequently asked questions
Which African country has the highest overweight prevalence among children under 5?
Lesotho has the highest overweight prevalence among children under 5 in Africa at 7.7% (2024), followed by Zimbabwe and Djibouti.
Which African country has the lowest overweight prevalence among children under 5?
Senegal has the lowest overweight prevalence among children under 5 of the 6 African countries with data, at 1.1% (2023).
How many African countries report Overweight Children data?
6 of 54 African countries have a Overweight Children figure in the Africa API, each from the latest year available for that country (which can differ between countries, here 2023–2024). Every value links to its full series with source and history.
How do I get this ranking via API?
Call GET /v1/data?metric_key=child_overweight_pct&latest=true with the country codes you need and a free Africa API key — the response returns the latest value per country as JSON.
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