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Mapped: Visualizing the True Size of Africa

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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.

CountryLand Area (sq. km)Land Area (sq. mi)% of Africa
🇺🇸 United States9.83 million3.80 million32.4%
🇨🇳 China9.60 million3.71 million31.6%
🇮🇳 India3.29 million1.27 million10.8%
🇲🇽 Mexico1.96 million0.76 million6.5%
🇵🇪 Peru1.29 million0.50 million4.2%
🇫🇷 France0.64 million0.25 million2.1%
🇪🇸 Spain0.51 million0.20 million1.7%
🇵🇬 Papua New Guinea0.46 million0.18 million1.5%
🇸🇪 Sweden0.45 million0.17 million1.5%
🇯🇵 Japan0.38 million0.15 million1.3%
🇩🇪 Germany0.36 million0.14 million1.2%
🇳🇴 Norway0.32 million0.13 million1.1%
🇮🇹 Italy0.30 million0.12 million1.0%
🇳🇿 New Zealand0.27 million0.10 million0.9%
🇬🇧 United Kingdom0.24 million0.09 million0.8%
🇳🇵 Nepal0.15 million0.06 million0.5%
🇧🇩 Bangladesh0.15 million0.06 million0.5%
🇬🇷 Greece0.13 million0.05 million0.4%
Total30.33 million sq. km11.71 million sq. mi99.9%

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.

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Demographics

Mapped: Population Growth by Region (1900-2050F)

In this visualization, we map the populations of major regions at three different points in time: 1900, 2000, and 2050 (forecasted).

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Map of Population Growth by Region

Mapping Population Growth by Region

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.

In fewer than 50 years, the world population has doubled in size, jumping from 4 to 8 billion.

In this visualization, we map the populations of major regions at three different points in time: 1900, 2000, and 2050 (forecasted). Figures come from Our World in Data as of March 2023, using the United Nations medium-fertility scenario.

 

 

Population by Continent (1900-2050F)

Asia was the biggest driver of global population growth over the course of the 20th century. In fact, the continent’s population grew by 2.8 billion people from 1900 to 2000, compared to just 680 million from the second on our list, Africa.

Region190020002050F
Asia931,021,4183,735,089,7755,291,555,919
Africa138,752,199818,952,3742,485,135,689
Europe406,610,221727,917,165704,398,730
North America104,231,973486,364,446679,488,449
South America41,330,704349,634,344491,078,697
Oceania5,936,61531,223,13357,834,753
World 🌐1,627,883,1306,149,181,2379,709,492,237

China was the main source of Asia’s population expansion, though its population growth has slowed in recent years. That’s why in 2023, India surpassed China to become the world’s most populous country.

Southeast Asian countries like the Philippines and Indonesia have also been big drivers of Asia’s population boom to this point.

The Future: Africa to Hit 2.5 Billion by 2050

Under the UN’s medium-fertility scenario (all countries converge at a birthrate of 1.85 children per woman by 2050), Africa will solidify its place as the world’s second most populous region.

Three countries—Nigeria, Ethiopia, and Egypt—will account for roughly 30% of that 2.5 billion population figure.

Meanwhile, both North America and South America are expected to see a slowdown in population growth, while Europe is the only region that will shrink by 2050.

A century ago, Europe’s population was close to 30% of the world total. Today, that figure stands at less than 10%.

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