Islam in Uganda: history and Muslim population data

History of Islam in Uganda

The Republic of Uganda has an area of 241,038 sq km and its map is presented in Figure 3.4.12a. It was occupied by the British in 1888 and gained its independence from the UK in 1962. Islam entered here with Muslim traders coming from Zanzibar in 1852. Eventually, King Muteesa I embraced Islam in 1880 and made it the state religion. He was the ruler of the Kingdom of Buganda from 1856 to 1884.

Estimates of the Muslim population increased from none in 1850, to 50,000 in 1911, to 98,000 or 3.4% in 1921. According to census data, the Muslim population increased from 0.12 million or 3.5% in 1931, to 0.4 million or 5.5% in 1959, to 1.8 million or 10.6% in 1991, to 3.0 million or 12.1% in 2002, to 4.7 million or 13.7% in 2014.

Thus, assuming that the percentage of Muslims will increase by one percentage point per decade; then the Muslim population is expected to reach fifteen million or 17% by 2050 and thirty million or 22% by 2100.

Historical Muslim population dataset for Uganda

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.

For the full time series and visualisation, use the interactive map above.