Africa covers about 30.3 million km², roughly a fifth of all the land on Earth, yet on the familiar Mercator world map it looks barely bigger than Greenland. In reality Africa is about fourteen times larger. The reason lies in a navigation chart drawn in 1569.

Illustration fitting outlines of several countries within the outline of Africa to compare area
Country outlines fitted inside Africa to compare their areas, the idea popularised by Kai Krause’s 2010 graphic “The True Size of Africa”.

The true size of Africa

Africa is the world’s second-largest continent. It has 54 recognised sovereign states and nearly 1.4 billion people; its largest country is Algeria. Area comparisons show the scale best:

  • Greenland looks about as large as Africa on a Mercator map; Africa is in fact around 14 times bigger.
  • In October 2010 the designer Kai Krause published “The True Size of Africa”, a graphic that fits the outlines of China, the United States, Brazil, Indonesia, Spain and much of Eastern Europe inside the continent, with each country scaled by its area in square kilometres.
  • The American Geographical Society used the same comparison to show how much the visual impression matters in how people think about Africa.

Why the Mercator projection shrinks Africa

The Flemish geographer Gerardus Mercator presented his projection in 1569. It is a conformal cylindrical projection: it keeps local angles true, and any course of constant compass bearing, a rhumb line, appears as a straight line. That made it the standard chart for sailors by the 18th century.

The price is area. Mercator inflates land more and more the farther it lies from the equator. The scale factor is about 1.15 at 30° latitude, 2 at 60° and 11.5 at 85°. Africa straddles the equator, so it is drawn close to true size, while Greenland, Canada, Scandinavia and Russia are hugely enlarged. On the same map Alaska looks as big as Australia, which is really 4.5 times larger, and Brazil is nearly five times the size of Alaska.

Peters equal-area world map with a row of alternative map projections below
The Peters equal-area world map, with alternative projections below.

Equal-area maps and the Equal Earth projection

No flat map can keep every property of a globe. An equal-area projection keeps the size of every region in true proportion and accepts some distortion of shape instead. The Gall–Peters map, shown above with a row of other projections, is the best-known example.

The newer Equal Earth projection was created in 2018 by Bojan Šavrič, Bernhard Jenny and Tom Patterson. Inspired by the Robinson projection, it keeps areas correct while giving continents a more familiar look. NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies used it for global temperature maps in 2018, and it is supported in common mapping software such as QGIS, Esri tools and PROJ. The US Geological Survey’s projection manual sets out the properties of each family of projections.

The Correct the Map campaign and the UN vote

The Correct the Map campaign, started by Africa No Filter and Speak Up Africa, asks institutions such as the UN, the World Bank and the BBC to adopt Equal Earth. The African Union and the Caribbean Community back the campaign.

On 4 September 2026 the UN General Assembly adopted the Correct the Map resolution by 164 votes to one, with six abstentions; the United States voted against. The resolution is non-binding. It encourages a move away from Mercator towards equal-area projections such as Equal Earth for world maps, while leaving other projections available for the jobs they do well.

Mercator still has a place. A variant called Web Mercator runs Google Maps, Bing Maps and OpenStreetMap, because a conformal map keeps local shapes and angles true, which suits street-level navigation. The lesson is to choose the map that fits the question: for comparing the size of countries and continents, use an equal-area map or a globe.

More maps to explore

For more surprising maps and what they really measure, see our map-reading guide.

Sources