While much of the world is currently concerned about issues with declining and aging populations, this is not the case with Muslims around the world who still have growing populations, and populations that are largely youthful.
There are an estimated 1.57 billion Muslims – nearly a quarter of the world’s total population.
While Muslims are found on all five inhabited continents, more than 60% of the global Muslim population is in Asia and about 20% in the Middle East and North Africa. However, the Middle East-North Africa region has the highest percentage of Muslim-majority countries, more than half of which are 95% Muslim or greater.
More than 300 million Muslims, or one-fifth of the world’s Muslim population, live in countries where Islam is not the majority religion. These minority Muslim populations are often quite large. India, for example, has the third-largest population of Muslims worldwide. China has more Muslims than Syria, while Russia is home to more Muslims than Jordan and Libya combined.
While there are much less Muslims within the West than in the countries above there are still sizeable populations to be found in parts of Europe. In Sweetzone’s home country, the United Kingdom, we have nearly 3 million Muslims and in countries like France and Germany there are larger populations coming up for 5M Muslims in each country.
In Europe as a whole, the Muslim share of the population was expected expected to grow by nearly one-third between 2010 and 2030, rising from 6% of the region’s inhabitants in 2010 to 8% in 2030. In absolute numbers, Europe’s Muslim population is projected to grow from 44.1 million in 2010 to 58.2 million in 2030.
In a recent Tesco conference in October 2024 we were surprised to hear that instead of the typically 2.1 children that we had 20 years ago the UK replacement rate is currently standing at 1.44 children per couple. The supermarkets are well aware that this is not the case within all communities and there is currently a real focus on ensuring they are genuinely serving the needs of the communities they supply with award winning offers.
Overall, it seems that with Muslim populations steadily increasing all over the world, combined with the growth in halal food consumption this is extremely good news for Sweetzone as it means that the number of people with a requirement for halal sweets will continue to grow and demand for our products should continue to grow internationally as well.
