Misc

Mapped: Visualizing the True Size of Africa

Published

4 years ago

February 19, 2020

Jeff Desjardins

The True Size of Africa Map

Mapped: The True Size of Africa

Take a look at any map, and it’s clear that the African continent is a big place.

However, despite the common perception that Africa is a large landmass, it’s still one that is vastly underestimated by most casual map viewers.

The reason for this is that the familiar Mercator map projection tends to distort our geographical view of the world in a crucial way — one that often leads to misconceptions about the relative sizes of both countries and continents.

A Geographical Jigsaw

Today’s infographic comes from Kai Krause and it shows the true size of Africa, as revealed by the borders of the countries that can fit within the continent’s shape.

The African continent has a land area of 30.37 million sq km (11.7 million sq mi) — enough to fit in the U.S., China, India, Japan, Mexico, and many European nations, combined.

Country	Land Area (sq. km)	Land Area (sq. mi)	% of Africa
🇺🇸 United States	9.83 million	3.80 million	32.4%
🇨🇳 China	9.60 million	3.71 million	31.6%
🇮🇳 India	3.29 million	1.27 million	10.8%
🇲🇽 Mexico	1.96 million	0.76 million	6.5%
🇵🇪 Peru	1.29 million	0.50 million	4.2%
🇫🇷 France	0.64 million	0.25 million	2.1%
🇪🇸 Spain	0.51 million	0.20 million	1.7%
🇵🇬 Papua New Guinea	0.46 million	0.18 million	1.5%
🇸🇪 Sweden	0.45 million	0.17 million	1.5%
🇯🇵 Japan	0.38 million	0.15 million	1.3%
🇩🇪 Germany	0.36 million	0.14 million	1.2%
🇳🇴 Norway	0.32 million	0.13 million	1.1%
🇮🇹 Italy	0.30 million	0.12 million	1.0%
🇳🇿 New Zealand	0.27 million	0.10 million	0.9%
🇬🇧 United Kingdom	0.24 million	0.09 million	0.8%
🇳🇵 Nepal	0.15 million	0.06 million	0.5%
🇧🇩 Bangladesh	0.15 million	0.06 million	0.5%
🇬🇷 Greece	0.13 million	0.05 million	0.4%
Total	30.33 million sq. km	11.71 million sq. mi	99.9%

You could add together all of the landmasses above and they would not equate to the geographical footprint of Africa, which itself is home to 54 countries and 1.2 billion people.

Editor’s note: The above table is slightly different from the countries shown in the visualization, which focuses more on fitting recognizable country shapes into the geographical shape of Africa.

Why the Misconception?

Interestingly, the problem with maps is not that Africa is sized incorrectly.

Using the animation below, you’ll see that Africa is actually the most accurately sized continent using the common Mercator map projection:

True size of countries animation Mercator

The Mercator projection attempts to place the spherical shape of the world onto a cylinder, causing areas closest to the poles to be “stretched”.

Africa, which straddles the Equator, barely changes in size — meanwhile, the countries furthest from the Equator become inflated from their true sizes on this type of map.

Mercator cylindrical projection

For those of us living in Western countries, this is an interesting dilemma to consider.

This means that the sizes of European and North American countries are distorted, giving us an inaccurate mental “measuring stick” for judging the relative sizes of other countries.

This has implications not only for Africa, but for the whole Southern Hemisphere: South America, India, the Middle East, and even Australia are “bigger” than they may initially appear on a map.

Related Topics:africa map geography mercator

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Politics

Charted: Trust in Government Institutions by G7 Countries

How much do you trust the government and its various institutions? We look at data for G7 countries for the time period of 2006-2023.

Published

1 day ago

April 30, 2024

Nick Routley

Trust in Government Institutions by G7 Countries

This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.

How much do you trust the government, and its various institutions?

It’s likely that your level of confidence probably depends on a wide range of factors, such as perceived competency, historical context, economic performance, accountability, social cohesion, and transparency.

And for these same reasons, trust levels in government institutions also change all the time, even in the world’s most developed countries: the G7.

Confidence in Government by G7 Countries (2006-2023)

This chart looks at the changes in trust in government institutions between the years 2006 and 2023, based on data from a multi-country Gallup poll.

Specifically, this dataset aggregates confidence in multiple national institutions, including the military, the judicial system, the national government, and the integrity of the electoral system.

Country	Confidence (2006)	Confidence (2023)	Change (p.p.)
Canada	57%	64%	+7
Britain	63%	63%	+0
Germany	55%	61%	+6
France	54%	60%	+6
Japan	48%	59%	+11
Italy	41%	54%	+13
United States	63%	50%	-13

What’s interesting here is that in the G7, a group of the world’s most developed economies, there is only one country bucking the general trend: the United States.

Across most G7 countries, confidence in institutions has either improved or stayed the same between 2006 and 2023. The largest percentage point (p.p.) increases occur in Italy and Japan, which saw +13 p.p. and +11 p.p. increases in trust over the time period.

In the U.S., however, confidence in government institutions has fallen by 13 p.p. over the years. What happened?

Key Figures on U.S. Trust in Institutions

In 2006, the U.S. was tied with the UK as having the highest confidence in government institutions, at 63%.

But here’s where the scores stand in 2023, across various institutions:

🇺🇸 Institutions	Confidence (2023)
Military	81%
Judiciary	42%
National Government	30%
Elections	44%
Overall	49%

Based on this data, it’s clear that the U.S. lags behind in three key indicators: confidence in the national government, confidence in the justice system, and confidence in fair elections. It ranked in last place for each indicator in the G7.

One other data point that stands out: despite leading the world in military spending, the U.S. is only the third most confident in its military in the G7. It lags behind France (86%) and the United Kingdom (83%).