Highest twinning rate (country)

Ivory Coast registered a rate of 24.9 twins for every 1,000 deliveries in the period 2010–15, according to a study of data from 135 countries by the University of Oxford’s Christiaan Monden and his colleagues published in 2020. The rate of twinning was highest overall in Africa. The report found that Ghana and South Sudan had the second-highest twinning rate, each with 24.8 twins per 1,000 deliveries, followed by Liechtenstein on 24.7 per 1,000. About 1.6 million twins are now born worldwide each year.

Professor Monden explained that, “The twinning rate in Africa is so high because of the high number of dizygotic twins – twins born from two separate eggs – born there." He continued, “This is most likely to be due to genetic differences between the African population and other populations.”