South Africa vs Zambia: Life expectancy

South Africa

66.14 years

in 2023

Zambia

66.35 years

in 2023

South Africa rank

201st

Zambia rank

199th

Life expectancy over time

South Africa
Zambia

How they compare

Zambia currently reports 66.35 years against 66.14 years in South Africa, a difference of 0.21 years.

The two have swapped places 4 times across 74 shared years of data; in 1950 it was Zambia ahead.

Globally, South Africa ranks 201st and Zambia ranks 199th of 236 countries.

Individual pages

Life expectancy in South Africa
Life expectancy in Zambia
Full country ranking

About this data

Indicator: Life expectancy
Unit: years
Source: Riley (2005); Zijdeman et al. (2015); HMD (2025); UN WPP (2024) – with major processing by Our World in Data
Licence: CC BY 4.0 (Our World in Data)
Coverage: 236 places, 19,452 data points, 1543–2023
Last refreshed: 06 August 2026

Period life expectancy is the number of years the average person born in a certain year would live if they experienced the same chances of dying at each age as people did that year.