Average IQ in Somalia: Where the Figure Comes From and Why It Is Disputed

The average IQ in Somalia that you see quoted is an estimate, not a test result. The usual figure, 68, comes from a 2002 book by Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen, which averaged Ethiopia’s 63 and Kenya’s 72 and rounded toward 100. A 2026 ranking page shows 83.84 for Somalia from an online quiz instead. The two are 16 points apart, and we found no representative sample of people in Somalia behind either.

Here is the detail most pages skip. The 68 rests on 1,677 people, and none of them was tested in Somalia: 250 Ethiopian teenagers tested in Israel, plus 205 adults and 1,222 children (1,427 people) tested in Kenya. Below: how the sum works, what the ranking pages show, what researchers say about the data and what international assessments cover. This article is about where a country-level number comes from, not about any group of people.

What is the average IQ in Somalia?

Nobody knows, because no representative IQ sample of Somalia has been published that we could find. Three numbers circulate, and each was made in a different way.

Searches for the Somali average IQ mostly lead to ranking pages that print one number per country and little else. The useful question for each is what sits behind the number.

Read these as three kinds of number: arithmetic on neighbours, a label we cannot trace, and an average of people who chose to take a quiz online. They cannot be set side by side on one scale. A score only has meaning against its own norm sample and scale, as our guide to what an IQ of 136 means shows with one number on three scales.

Where does the 68 for Somalia come from?

From a sum: (63 + 72) / 2 = 67.5, rounded toward 100 to give 68. Lynn and Vanhanen say they “estimated the IQs” of 104 countries with more than 50,000 people for which they found no data, by averaging the IQs of neighbouring countries and rounding any decimal toward 100.

The same Ethiopia number sets Djibouti and Eritrea too: both get 68, from Ethiopia 63 and Sudan 72. So a few samples from Israel and Kenya fix the score of three countries. Later editions came in 2006 (Lynn and Vanhanen) and 2019 (Lynn and Becker). We could not read what they print for Somalia, so this article describes the 2002 table only.

A real national estimate needs a random sample of the whole population, a test checked for fairness in the local languages and settings, and recent data. The 2002 samples came from other countries, from the 1980s and 1990s, and the authors adjusted them for the age of the test norms. That is a method for filling a gap in a table, not a measurement of a nation.

Is the average IQ in Somalia measured or estimated?

Estimated, in the 2002 table. The ranking page that lists 67.67 for 2019 marks it as based on “actual test results from said country”. It names no study, and we found none.

The page’s headline figure, 83.84, comes from a different source. The International IQ Test is an online quiz that visitors choose to take, so its takers are a self-selected group. The page says its data cover 1,352,763 participants worldwide and does not say how many were from Somalia. It also labels 83.84 the lowest in the world, which describes that list and nothing more.

Why do researchers dispute national IQ data from Africa?

Because the samples are few, uneven and often not national, and tests built elsewhere may not measure the same thing in every setting. Peer-reviewed papers have said so since 2010.

The exchange is long, and both sides published. For Somalia the point is simpler than the debate: the 2002 table contains no Somali sample at all. Our own review of what country IQ rankings cannot support reaches the same caution.

Which country has the lowest average IQ?

It depends on the list. The online-quiz page names Somalia at 83.84. In the 2002 table, Equatorial Guinea and Sao Tome and Principe carry 59, lower than Somalia’s 68.

Equatorial Guinea’s 59 comes from a measured sample of 48 children aged 10 to 14, tested around 1984 on the WISC-R. Sao Tome and Principe’s 59 is copied from it. Lists mix measured samples, estimates and online quizzes, so a “lowest” label describes the list, not a country. Our average IQ by country page shows the sources, the smartest countries study compares several rankings, and the 2026 online ranking shows how a quiz-based table is built.

Countries with large, recent norm samples are a different case. See the USA, Germany and South Korea for what a country page looks like when the data exist.

Does Somalia appear in international school assessments?

Not in the World Bank’s learning data. Its databank returned no value for Somalia in the Harmonized Test Scores series or the Learning Poverty series when we checked on 3 November 2026. We could not read the PISA, TIMSS or PIAAC participant lists, so we do not say whether Somalia joined them.

The same databank shows gross primary enrolment of 20.9% in 2023 and gross secondary enrolment of 3.3%, from UNESCO Institute for Statistics data. A gross ratio counts pupils of any age, so it is not the share of children in school. UNICEF says more than three million children in Somalia are out of school and that the poor quality of education shows in students’ results. It also reports that more than 1.2 million children suffered from malnutrition in 2018.

These conditions shape how any child performs on any test. None of the sources gives an IQ effect size, so we do not put a number on it. Where a country has no recent test data, a ranking page can leave it blank or fill it from neighbours. The 2002 table filled it.

Can you take a Somali IQ test?

No test gives a national average on its own. An IQ test places one person against a norm sample, and the score means little without knowing that sample. A test built in one language and culture must be adapted and re-normed before it means the same thing in another, and Wicherts and colleagues call for more studies of measurement bias in Western IQ tests used in Africa. If you want your own result with a percentile beside it, take the IQ test and read the number against its scale.

Quick answers

• What is the average IQ in Somalia? No measured figure exists that we could find. The 68 is an estimate from Ethiopia and Kenya (2002), and 83.84 is an online-quiz average.
• Where does Somalia’s 68 come from? (63 + 72) / 2 = 67.5, rounded toward 100.
• Is Somalia’s national IQ measured? Not in the 2002 table, where it is an estimate. One 2019 value is labelled test-based, with no study named.
• Which country has the lowest IQ? It depends on the list. The 2002 table gives 59 to Equatorial Guinea, and an online-quiz page names Somalia at 83.84.
• Are national IQ rankings reliable? Published critiques say the African samples are unsystematic and the tests may not measure the same thing.

The bottom line

Somalia’s average IQ is not a measurement. The 68 is a rounded mean of two neighbours’ figures that rests on 1,677 people tested elsewhere, and the 83.84 is the average of an online quiz. When you meet a country IQ number, ask three things: who was tested, where, and whether the figure is a sample or a sum.

Sources

• Lynn and Vanhanen (2002), IQ and the Wealth of Nations, Praeger: chapter 6 (estimation of missing national IQs) and appendix 1 (the samples), read in the Internet Archive scan.
• World Population Review, Average IQ by Country 2026: Somalia 83.84 (International IQ Test) and the Lynn/Becker 2019 column with its test-based label.
• Wicherts, Dolan and van der Maas (2010), Intelligence 38(1), 1-20, and Wicherts and colleagues, Intelligence 38(1), 30-37; the reply is Lynn and Meisenberg, Intelligence 38(1), 21-29.
• Wicherts and colleagues (2010), Learning and Individual Differences 20(3), 135-151: Raven’s matrices in sub-Saharan Africa.
• Sear, National IQ datasets do not provide accurate, unbiased or comparable measures of cognitive ability worldwide: PsyArXiv preprint.
• World Bank Open Data, school enrolment for Somalia, and UNICEF Somalia, education and nutrition.