Islam by country · Africa
Islam in Madagascar: history and Muslim population data
Explore CoMPS research on the historical journey of Islam in Madagascar, alongside population data and an interactive timeline.
Open Madagascar in the interactive map
History of Islam in Madagascar
The Republic of Madagascar has an area of 587,041 sq km occupying the fourth largest island in the world. A map of this island nation is presented in Figure 3.3.6. It was occupied by the French in 1883 and gained its independence from France in 1960. Islam entered the northern part of this island during the ninth century through Muslim traders from the Arabian Peninsula. Islam also entered from the south in 1480 with Malay settlers. Estimates of the Muslim population increased from 70,000 or 2.0% in 1887, to 0.20 million or 4.6% in 1950, to 0.38 million or 5.0% in 1975. According to Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), the Muslim population was 0.1 million or 0.9% in 1992 and 0.7% in 1997, then increased to 0.2 million or 0.8% in 2009 and 0.5 million or 1.8% in 2021.
Thus, assuming that the percentage of Muslims will increase by a quarter of a percentage point per decade; then the Muslim population is expected to exceed one million or 2.5% by 2050 and exceed three million or 3.8% by 2100.
Historical Muslim population dataset for Madagascar
The figures below are from the CoMPS historical dataset. Population values are expressed in thousands; 2100 is a modelled projection, not a present-day count.
| Year | Total population (thousands) | Muslim population (thousands) | Muslim share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1900 | 2,969 | 59.08 | 1.99% |
| 2000 | 15,973 | 113.4 | 0.71% |
| 2100 | 83,129 | 3,117 | 3.75% |
For the full time series and visualisation, use the interactive map above.