Islam by country · Africa
Islam in Namibia: history and Muslim population data
Explore CoMPS research on the historical journey of Islam in Namibia, alongside population data and an interactive timeline.
Open Namibia in the interactive map
History of Islam in Namibia
The Republic of Namibia has an area of 824,292 sq km and its map is presented in Figure 3.5.7. It was occupied by the Germans in 1884 as German South West Africa but taken from them by South Africa in 1915. Namibia gained its independence from South Africa in 1990, when it changed its name from South West Africa. Islam entered here in 1970s and gained attention when a prominent politician named Jacobs Salman Dhamir embraced Islam in 1980. The first mosque was erected in 1986 in Katutura. According to ABS survey data, the percentage of Muslims was 0.25% in 2003, 0.08% in 2006, 2012 and 2015.
Thus, assuming that the percentage of Muslims will continue to increase by 0.02 of a percentage point per decade; then the Muslim population is expected to reach 6,000 or 0.2% by 2050 and 13,000 or 0.3% by 2100.
Historical Muslim population dataset for Namibia
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 | 180.0 | 0.000 | 0.00% |
| 2000 | 1,799 | 1.44 | 0.08% |
| 2100 | 5,015 | 13.04 | 0.26% |
For the full time series and visualisation, use the interactive map above.