The Tallest Tribe In Africa

The Dinka tribe are a Niloticethnic group native to South Sudan with a sizable diaspora population abroad. The Dinka mostly live along the Nile, from Jonglei to Renk, in the region of Bahr el Ghazal, Upper Nile (two out of three Provinces which were formerly located in southern Sudan), and the Abyei Area of the Ngok Dinka in South Sudan.

They number around 4.5 million people according to the 2008 Sudan census, constituting about 18% of the population of the entire country and the largest ethnic tribe in South Sudan.

Dinka, or as they refer to themselves, Muonyjang (singular) and jieng(plural), make up one of the branches of the River Lake Nilotes (mainly sedentary agropastoral peoples of the Nile Valley and African Great Lakes region who speak Nilotic languages, including the Nuer and Luo).

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Dinka are noted for their height, and, along with the Tutsi of Rwanda, they are believed to be the tallest people in Africa. Roberts and Bainbridge reported the average height of 182.6 cm (5 ft 11.9 in) in a sample of 52 Dinka Agaar and 181.3 cm (5 ft 11.4 in) in 227 Dinka Ruweng measured in 1953–1954.

However, it seems that the stature of today’s Dinka males is lower, possibly as a consequence of undernutrition and conflicts.

An anthropometric survey of Dinka men, war refugees in Ethiopia, published in 1995, found a mean height of 176.4 cm (5 ft 9.4 in). Other studies of comparative historical height data and nutrition place the Dinka as the tallest people in the world.

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The Dinka people have no centralised political authority, instead comprising many independent but interlinked clans. Some of those clans traditionally provide ritual chiefs, known as the “masters of the fishing spear” orbeny bith, who provide leadership for the entire people and appear to be at least in part hereditary.