Dear Reader,
I recently watched the news from the UN about changing the world map to reflect the real size of Africa. In one online article I read that Africa was big enough to hold the USA, Europe and China.
So I decided to do my own research and I wish to answer these questions::
- How Big is Africa?.
- How does the size of Africa compare to Europe? USA? South America? China? India? Russia? Western Europe?
- Why does this matter to the UN? The UN said world economic aid is distributed by the UN and thus by it's member states 201 of them according to a country or continents size?
- If Africa is big, How big?
- Is Africa is the largest? next largest? continent?
- What other countries are larger then our maps show? Which countries are smaller then the maps show?
The UN General Assembly passed the historic "Correct the Map" resolution. Spearheaded by Togo and backed by the African Union, the UN voted 164 to 1 (with the US voting against) to endorse shifting away from the traditional 16th-century Mercator projection in favor of equal-area maps like the Equal Earth projection. [2, 3, 4]
How Africa Compares Globally (The Real Numbers)
The map we grew up seeing was created by Gerardus Mercator in 1569 for ocean navigation. Because it stretches a sphere onto a flat cylinder, it heavily inflates landmasses near the poles while shrinking anything near the equator. [2, 5]
In reality, Africa covers 30.3 million square kilometers (11.7 million sq miles). The table below reveals how Africa truly compares to other major global regions and countries: [2]
Africa is visually distorted on most standard maps, and it is indeed large enough to comfortably fit the United States, China, India, and nearly all of Europe combined. [1, 2]
Why Does This Matter to the UN?
Your research brings up an excellent question regarding aid distribution. To clarify a common misconception: The UN does not distribute economic aid based on a continent's geographic size.
Instead, UN economic aid, development resources, and funding are primarily allocated based on data like Gross National Income (GNI), poverty rates, and population metrics. Furthermore, the UN currently has 193 member states (not 201).
The UN voted on this change because of "cognitive justice" and psychological impact. As Togolese Foreign Minister Robert Dussey put it, "A map is never neutral. It shapes perceptions and influences how the place of peoples and continents in the world is understood." By visually shrinking Africa, the Mercator map historically minimized the perceived geopolitical weight, economic potential, and development needs of equatorial nations. [3, 6]
Summary: Sizing Up the Continents
- Is Africa the largest? No, Asia is the largest continent on Earth (covering about 44.5 million km²). Africa is the second-largest continent. [1]
- Which places are LARGER than traditional maps show? Countries near the equator are heavily squished by Mercator maps. Africa, South America, India, Mexico, and Australia are all vastly larger in real life than they look on standard school maps. [7, 8]
- Which places are SMALLER than maps show? High-latitude regions near the poles are drastically bloated. On a traditional map, Greenland looks the same size as Africa, but Africa is actually 14 times larger. Russia, Canada, Europe, and the United States are also visually exaggerated and significantly smaller relative to Africa than they appear. [3, 9, 10]
Would you like me to generate a printable comparison map via Python code that layers these country boundaries directly over Africa to show you exactly how they fit?
[1] https://www.facebook.com
[2] https://www.facebook.com
[3] https://www.bbc.com
[4] https://news.un.org
[5] https://www.bbc.com
[6] https://www.bbc.com
[7] https://www.aljazeera.com
[8] https://www.aljazeera.com
[9] https://www.dw.com
[10] https://www.facebook.com