The true size of Africa

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How Big is Africa? Believe It When You See It…

When most people look at a map of the world they see a version of the Mercator Projection Map. It’s been around since 1569 and is extremely useful for navigating, but the scale on a Mercator map is formulated in a way that increases a country’s size the further away it is from the equator. 

So on this map, which is still widely used in classrooms, Web mapping, and even media, countries on or close to the equator appear several times smaller than they actually are.

The biggest continent to get the short shrift is Africa. Kai Krause, a German software designer, has developed a map using the actual square mile/km footage of each country in the world.

The results show the true size of Africa. And the continent is big… bigger than the United States, China, India, Japan and all of Europe combined.