ABSTRACT
In 1985 there were approximately 130 million Muslims (or roughly one-sixth of the total world Muslim population) living in Africa between the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. They are mainly concentrated in the Sahelian and Sudanic (or savannah) belts lying to the immediate south of the true Sahara and between the Atlantic and the Red Sea and in the Horn of Africa and along the East African coast down to northern Mozambique. A little over half of this number live in West Africa, with one country alone—Nigeria—accounting for about one-third of the sub-Saharan African total (estimated 43 million). The Nilotic Sudan accounts for a further 14.5 million, or 73 per cent of the total population of the Republic of the Sudan, 13 million or 40 per cent of Ethiopia’s population (including Eritrea) is Muslim, while some 18 million live in the Horn and East Africa.
