Misc

Mapped: Visualizing the True Size of Africa

Published

3 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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Misc

Visualizing the Odds of Dying from Various Accidents

This infographic shows you the odds of dying from a variety of accidents, including car crashes, bee stings, and more.

Published

21 hours ago

January 27, 2023

Marcus Lu

Infographic: The Odds of Dying from Various Accidents

Fatal accidents account for a significant number of deaths in the U.S. every year. For example, nearly 43,000 Americans died in traffic accidents in 2021.

Without the right context, however, it can be difficult to properly interpret these figures.

To help you understand your chances, we’ve compiled data from the National Safety Council, and visualized the lifetime odds of dying from various accidents.

Data and Methodology

The lifetime odds presented in this graphic were estimated by dividing the one-year odds of dying by the life expectancy of a person born in 2020 (77 years).

Additionally, these numbers are based on data from the U.S., and likely differ in other countries.

Type of Accident	Lifetime odds of dying (1 in #)
Motor vehicle accident	101
Complications of medical and surgical care	798
Alcohol poisoning	1,606
Accidental building fire	1,825
Choking on food	2,745
Drowning in swimming pool	5,782
Sunstroke	6,368
Accidental firearm discharge	7,998
Drowning	10,386
Airplane accident	11,756
Bee or wasp sting	57,825
Dog attack	69,016
Lightning strike	138,849

For comparison’s sake, the odds of winning the Powerball jackpot are 1 in 292,000,000. In other words, you are 4000x more likely to die by a lightning strike over your lifetime than to win the Powerball lottery.

Continue reading below for further context on some of these accidents.

Motor Vehicle Accidents

Motor vehicle accidents are a leading cause of accidental deaths in the U.S., with a 1 in 101 chance of dying. This is quite a common way of dying, especially when compared to something like bee stings (1 in 57,825).

Unfortunately, a major cause of vehicle deaths is impaired driving. The CDC reports that 32 Americans are killed every day in crashes involving alcohol, which equates to one death every 45 minutes.

For further context, consider this: 30% of all traffic-related deaths in 2020 involved alcohol-impaired drivers.

Drowning

The odds of drowning in a swimming pool (1 in 5,782) are significantly higher than those of drowning in general (1 in 10,386). According to the CDC, there are 4,000 fatal drownings every year, which works out to 11 deaths per day.

Drowning also happens to be a leading cause of death for children. It is the leading cause for kids aged 1-4, and second highest cause for kids aged 5-14.

A rather surprising fact about drowning is that 80% of fatalities are male. This has been attributed to higher rates of alcohol use and risk-taking behaviors.

Accidental Firearm Discharge

Lastly, let’s look at accidental firearm deaths, which have lifetime odds of 1 in 7,998. That’s higher than the odds of drowning (general), as well as dying in an airplane accident.

This shouldn’t come as a major surprise, since the U.S. has the highest rates of gun ownership in the world. More importantly, these odds highlight the importance of properly securing one’s firearms, as well as learning safe handling practices.

As a percentage of total gun-related deaths (45,222 in 2020), accidental shootings represent a tiny 1%. The two leading causes are suicide (54%) and homicide (43%).

Interested in learning more about death? Revisit one of our most popular posts of all time: Visualizing the History of Pandemics.