The harnessed bushbuck is distributed from Senegal and southern Mauritania across the Sahel, east to Ethiopia, and south to Angola and the southern Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is common across this broad geographic distribution and is found in wooded savannas, forest-savanna mosaics; penetrating into some of the rain forest zones of the southern Central African Republic, Gabon, Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of Congo; in montane forests of the Bamenda Highlands and Mount Cameroon; and in the semi-arid zones of the Ethiopian lowlands. It does not occur in the deep rain forests of the central Congo Basin.