Home / Guides / Zakat in West Africa
Covers Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal, Mali, Niger, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Benin, Togo, Côte d'Ivoire, Sierra Leone, Liberia, the Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Mauritania and
Covers Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal, Mali, Niger, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Benin, Togo, Côte d'Ivoire, Sierra Leone, Liberia, the Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Mauritania and Cabo Verde. West Africa's Muslims are numerous — Nigeria alone has one of the largest Muslim populations on earth — but the region has no central Zakat authority, and that absence shapes everything about how giving works here.
Giving in West Africa is personal and local. A payer gives directly to people in need, through a mosque fund, or through a local Zakat committee or relief charity. Nigeria's size has produced the region's most organised structures, with state-level Zakat bodies in parts of the north and large charitable networks, but there is no national collection agency and no published national total. Honest note: no single central Zakat collection body or national collection figure was verifiable for any West African country in this guide's sources, so a reader should be wary of any page that quotes one.
Nigeria has the region's most formal process, and it is worth describing because it shows how a country without a single religious ministry still reaches one date. The Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA), led by the Sultan of Sokoto as its President-General, asks Muslims to look for the crescent on the 29th of Sha'ban; its National Moon Sighting Committee, working with the National Space Research and Development Agency, verifies reports, and the Sultan then declares the start. For 2026 the Council asked Muslims to look on Tuesday 17 February: a confirmed sighting would have made Wednesday 18 February the first fast, and no sighting would have made it Thursday 19 February. Other West African countries follow their own national announcements, and start dates in the region do not always match.
The silver Nisab is 612.36 grams, about US$968 at the 1 November 2026 silver price of US$1.58 per gram. In West Africa that figure deserves a pause: where many earners live on small cash incomes, the silver Nisab can represent several months of earnings.
Honest note: no single official Fitrana figure was verifiable for any West African country in this guide's sources. The obligation is the same as everywhere — one sa' of the local staple food per person, paid before the Eid prayer — but the cash equivalent is set locally, from the price of millet, sorghum, maize or rice in that town, and a reader should ask their own mosque rather than copying a figure from another country.
All prices and rates in this example are illustrative, not live rates.
A trader in Kano holds NGN 3,000,000 in cash and NGN 1,000,000 in shop stock, a total of NGN 4,000,000 held for a full lunar year, with no debts due. Using an illustrative rate of NGN 1,500 per US dollar purely to make the arithmetic visible, the silver Nisab of about US$968 converts to roughly NGN 1,452,000, so the wealth is well above Nisab and Zakat is due on the whole amount: NGN 4,000,000 × 2.5% = NGN 100,000. Use the live exchange rate on the day of payment, not the illustrative rate used here.
Figures are those published for the year stated; always recheck the issuing body's current figure before paying.