The True Size Of Africa

Thursday, October 14th, 2010

The True Size Of Africa

Brilliant infographic from Kai Krause (perhaps the Kai Krause?) to combat rampant ‘immappancy’


(Now corrected for map projection errors by marauding carto-nerds – thanks Manuela Schmidt)

I would perhaps twin it with these:

True Size Of USASee the image on its own

True Size Of AntarticaSee the image on its own

True Size Of AustraliaSee the image on its own

(Credits: USA – Bill Rankin, Radical Cartography, Antartica – NASA, Australia – unknown)

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  • http://THETRUESIZEOFAFRICA SANA

    HOW STUPID

  • pjg

    I think there’s an irony in there somewhere, coming from Ireland and all.

    • Sam Shields

      Ireland rules! Musically, politically, intellectually, romantically, emotionally, and many other ways, I’m sure.

  • Astarté

    Did you try the Peters` model? It is more bleeding, if possible.

  • pit

    Oh, there is no such country like “Eastern Europe”…let’s do better map studies next time ;)
    thx form PL :)

  • Alex

    Great! What about South America?

    • Sam Shields

      It still remains the great continent that it always has been.

  • JD

    It’s annoying to click on the first visualisation and see such false facts as “This single image tries to embody the massive scale, which is larger than the USA, China, India, Japan and all of Europe……. combined!”

    Big chunks of Europe are missing! Just take a look here, to see what Europe is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Europe_orthographic_Caucasus_Urals_boundary.svg

    Please update the post, otherwise that infograph will create factoids that people keep on repeating…

    • K

      pit – You are missing the point – Eastern Europe – although not a country is a geographical region consisting of many small countries including Norway, Greece, Poland, Ukraine… As many of these countries are very small, it makes sense to group them together as the region ‘Eastern Europe’ for this representation.

      JD – It is annoying that so many people repeat this sort of thing without checking the facts, however it is very close to being true.
      USA (9 629 000) + China (9 597 000) + India (3 287 000) + Japan (378 000) + All of Europe (10 180 000) = 33 072 000 is only a little GREATER than the area of Africa at 30 200 000! (NB. All rounded to nearest thousand)
      Although the image may show all of Europe (if you look closely at the image of Eastern Europe it does seem to include Denmark/Norway/Finland/Sweden in north, & maybe parts of Turkey, Kazakhstan & Russia in the far East), but the map needs to be much better than this to prove the point.

      • Michael

        FYI: Norway is not part of eastern Europe. It is up in the north-west. 67th place in size, border to Sweden which is on 57th place in size. The whole Scandinavia is missing in the map.

  • Bob

    Ireland is NOT part of the UK. Geographically the correct term is British Isles!!

    • Tommy Burke

      Actually we are trying to avoid using the term British Isles when talking about Ireland. at least historians are!.

  • winston51

    i know its hurts to read couse africa has always been seen as the dark place of the world so has not sinifcance but it if the larges land mass and where all human life began

  • Ssemutooke

    Who is this one fooling, misleading people with this wretched misrepresentation? This is the total land area of all continents, showing that Africa isn’t so large a continent as to be equal the total land area of Asia, North America, Europe…like that silly map shows.

    The World: 57,308,738 Sq. Miles (148,429,000 Sq. Km) 100%
    Asia (plus the Middle East): 17,212,000 Sq. Miles (44,579,000 Sq. Km) 30.0%
    Africa: 11,608,000 Sq. Miles (30,065,000 Sq. Km) 20.3%
    North America: 9,365,000 Sq. Miles (24,256,000 Sq. Km) 16.3%
    South America: 6,880,000 Sq. Miles (17,819,000 Sq. Km) 12.0%
    Antarctica: 5,100,000 Sq. Miles (13,209,000 Sq. Km) 8.9%
    Europe: 3,837,000 Sq. Miles (9,938,000 Sq. Km) 6.7%
    Australia (plus Oceania) 2,968,000 Sq. Miles (7,687,000 Sq. Km)

    • msmeckel

      Why are *you* trying to mislead people?
      You are seriously misrepresenting/describing what that top map purports to show. It has no label of “North America” – it includes only the U.S., not the sizeable
      nations of Mexico and Canada. (Actually, it *does* fail to include the very large state of Alaska; the pic of the U.S. should be labeled the “lower 48″). The map has no label of “Asia” – China and India, yes, but it makes no claim to include huge Russia/Siberia, or the central Asian nations, or the nations of southeastern Asia. It does not show “Europe,” only selected pieces of it. The failure to include Alaska/Hawaii as part of the U.S. is rather insulting, but not especially misleading,
      since the picture is clearly of the lower 48. Assuming the national/regional boundaries are drawn in proportion, the map is not misleading.

  • Fijat
  • David Pepperell

    Who cares? Its big – so what? What’s the point?

    • Pepperell, Go Away

      It means that maps, produced by europeans or their descendants, have been systematically and deliberately distorted to mislead and manipulate – that’s what.

      Clearly this post was over your head.

  • http://oranse.net Chris Helenius

    Editors,
    please fix the broken link to the corrected image: http://yfrog.com/f/8677vp/

  • Anne

    An enlightening image in one sense but unfortunately inaccurate. The Republic of Ireland is definitely not part of the UK; we’ve a different political system, government, currency, police force, army, educational system. The queen of England only recently visited Ireland as a foreign head of state.

  • Szymon

    Well, there seem to be a lot of misconception regarding Eastern Europe.

    The exact definition of this region is rather flexible and based on political rather than topographical criteria. Sometimes the Central European countries that belonged to the Soviet bloc (ie. Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary) are listed as Eastern Europe, sometimes not.

    However, no definition of Eastern Europe misses Russia, which is by far the largest European country. The former Soviet republics: Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Lithuania, Letuva and Estonia are also definitely part of the Eastern Europe. The map we are discussing is missing all of these! What is shown as “Eastern Europe” here are the following countries:
    Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Serbia, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Bosnia, Albania, Bulgaria, Romania, Greece, and parts of Austria and Croatia.
    Compare with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Europe and you will see it is very, very wrong.

  • Baba

    Africa is that Big ….. I pity those in the south east corner on the UK squashed in.

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