Sub-Saharan Africa, which includes 50 countries and territories, has about 241 million Muslims, which is about 15% of the world Muslim population. Nigeria has the largest Muslim population in Sub-Saharan Africa, with about 78 million Muslims (about 50% of Nigeria’s total population). Almost one-in-three Muslims (about 32%) in Sub-Saharan Africa live in Nigeria. Western Africa is the only area in Sub-Saharan Africa with a Muslim majority. In contrast, the southern part of Africa has the smallest Muslim population.
Sub-Saharan Africa is also home to a number of countries that have very large Muslim majorities. Countries with the highest percentages of Muslim populations are: Mauritania (99%), Niger (99%), Somalia (99%), Mayotte (98%), Comoros (98%), Djibouti (97%), Senegal (96%), Gambia (95%), Mali (93%), Guinea (84%) and Sierra Leone (71%). The combined Muslim population of all these countries is about 67 million, or about 4% of the global Muslim population.
Countries in Sub-Saharan Africa with the Largest Number of Muslims
| Estimated 2009 Muslim Population |
Percentage of Population that is Muslim |
Percentage of World Muslim Population |
|
|---|---|---|---|
| Nigeria | 78,056,000 | 50.4% | 5.0% |
| Ethiopia | 28,063,000 | 33.9 | 1.8 |
| Niger | 15,075,000 | 98.6 | 1.0 |
| Tanzania | 13,218,000 | 30.2 | 0.8 |
| Mali | 12,040,000 | 92.5 | 0.8 |
| Senegal | 12,028,000 | 96.0 | 0.8 |
| Burkina Faso | 9,292,000 | 59.0 | 0.6 |
| Somalia | 8,995,000 | 98.5 | 0.6 |
| Guinea | 8,502,000 | 84.4 | 0.5 |
| Ivory Coast | 7,745,000 | 36.7 | 0.5 |
| Rest of Region | 47,618,000 | 11.3 | 3.0 |
| Regional Total | 240,632,000 | 30.1 | 15.3 |
| World Total | 1,571,198,000 | 22.9 | 100.0 |
| Note: Figures may not sum to totals due to rounding.Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life • Mapping the Global Muslim Population, October 2009 | |||
Map: Distribution of Muslim Population in Sub-Saharan Africa
Roll over a country bubble to see its estimated 2009 Muslim population, the percentage of its population that is Muslim and the percentage of the world Muslim population it represents.
[embeded: src=”https://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/11/2009/10/I_africa_map.swf” width=”560″ height=”460″ ]* Indicates the use of a source with a small enough sample size to make these estimates somewhat less reliable. Due to this greater margin of error, percentages are rounded to the nearest integer rather than to the first decimal place and are therefore more approximate (~).
Countries where the number of Muslims is too small to be reliably estimated not shown
