- Religious Freedom
- Religious Regulation
- Religious Support
Preferred Religion (2015)1: Sunni
Majority Religion (2015)2: Sunni Muslim (77.6%)
Religious Adherents, (2015)2
|Muslim (all denominations combined)||77.6%||50.5%||22.8%|
|Ethnoreligionist (incl. Animist, Shamanist)||12.4%||9.8%||2.5%|
|Christian (all denominations combined)||9.3%||37.9%||29.9%|
|Not Religious (incl. Atheist)||0.2%||0.3%||12%|
The country has an area of 94,926 square miles and a population of 9.9 million. Islam is demographically, socially, and culturally the dominant religion. Approximately 85 percent of the population is Muslim, 10 percent is Christian, and 5 percent holds traditional indigenous beliefs. Muslims are generally Sunni; there are relatively few Shi'a, although they are increasing in number. Christian groups include Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Baptists, Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh-day Adventists, and other evangelical groups active in the country and recognized by the Government. There is a small Baha'i community. There are small numbers of Hindus, Buddhists, and practitioners of traditional Chinese religious groups among the expatriate community.
Some Muslims and Christians incorporate traditional indigenous beliefs and rituals into their religious practices.
Muslims comprise a majority in all four major regions of the country. Christians are most numerous in Conakry, in the south, and in the eastern forest region. Christians also reside in all large towns except those in the Fouta Djalon region in the middle of the country, where Islam is deeply intertwined with Pular (or Fulani or Peuhl) culture and society. Traditional indigenous religious beliefs are most prevalent in the forest region.
Participation in formal religious services and rituals is high since traditional cultural rituals are often closely tied to religious practices. The Secretariat General of Religious Affairs estimates that more than 70 percent of Muslims practice their faith regularly.
The country's significant immigrant and refugee populations generally practice the same religious beliefs as citizens, although those from neighboring Liberia and Sierra Leone have higher percentages of Christians and adherents of traditional indigenous religious groups.
1. The Religious Characteristics of States Dataset Project: Government Religious Preference (GRP) measures government-level favoritism toward, and disfavor against, 30 religious denominations. A series of ordered categorical variables index the state's institutional favoritism in 28 different ways. The variables are combined to form five composite indices for five broad components of state-religion: official status, religious education, financial support, regulatory burdens, and freedom of practice. The five components' composites in turn are further combined into a single composite score, the GRP score. The RCS Data Project would like to acknowledge, recognize, and express our deepest gratitude for the significant contributions of Todd M. Johnson, the principal investigator of the World Christian Database, the co-principal investigator of the World Religion Database, and co-author of the World Christian Encyclopedia series.
2. The Religious Characteristics of States Dataset Project: Demographics reports annual estimates of religious demographics, both country by country and region by region. It estimates populations and percentages of adherents of 100 religious denominations including second level subdivisions within Christianity and Islam. The RCS Data Project would like to acknowledge, recognize, and express our deepest gratitude for the significant contributions of Todd M. Johnson, the principal investigator of the World Christian Database, the co-principal investigator of the World Religion Database, and co-author of the World Christian Encyclopedia series.
3. The U.S. State Department's International Religious Freedom Report is submitted to Congress annually by the Department of State in compliance with Section 102(b) of the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA) of 1998. This report supplements the most recent Human Rights Reports by providing additional detailed information with respect to matters involving international religious freedom. It includes individual country chapters on the status of religious freedom worldwide. A dataset with these and the other international measures highlighted on the country pages can be downloaded from this website. These State Department reports are open source.