The newly-released 2024 census report has shed light on how Ugandans’ views on matters of faith have evolved over the last 10 years (2014-2024).
Based on what individual Ugandans told enumerators during the May 2024 population & housing census enumeration exercise, the final report shows that the number of Ugandans who despise religion and don’t subscribe to any religious affiliation has increased to 85,559 people compared to 2014 when it was only 78,254.
According to the 2024 final census report, authored by a group of eminent staticians and analysts led by UBOS Governing Board Chairman Dr. Albert Byamugisha and Executive Director Dr. Chris Mukiza, this increase has even been higher and more pronounced among all the other religious groups.
The report shows that of the Ugandan population of roughly 46m people, 99.8% are religious (meaning they subscribe to some religion) and only 0.2% confessed to belonging to no religion whatsoever. 82% of Ugandans are Christians and 13% are Muslims.
The same report shows that the largest number of Ugandans are Catholics (16.6m), followed by Protestants or Anglicans (13.3m). Ten years ago, Catholics were 13.4m and Anglicans 10.94m. Pentecostals or Balokoles today are 6.5m as opposed to 2014’s 3.8m, Muslims today are 6m as opposed to 4.7m in 2014 and SDAs today are 0.91m as opposed to 0.59m in 2014.
The others have evolved or grown as follows in the last 10 years (2014-2024): Orthodox 65,150 vs. 48,421; traditionalists 56,332 vs. 33,805 and Jehovah’s witness 46,147 vs. 22,270.
There is also another category designated in the report as ‘others’ comprising of Bahai, Hindus, Buddhists and Owobushobozi among others. These combined stood at 704,334 as at May 2024 compared to the 548,348 which the 2014 census revealed them to be 10 years earlier.
These findings will fascinate and equally intrigue many as some of these religious groups that have been analysed had all along been thought to have more or less numbers than has been disclosed through the 2024 census process.
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