How Big is Africa

How big is Africa?

Greenland as big as Africa? This widespread misconception goes back to a world map from 1569 — one that has shaped how millions picture the planet. A newer map shows how it could be done better.

No land or sea map can truly portray the Earth as it is. The planet is not a flat disk. Every attempt to transfer the curved surface of the globe onto a flat paper forces cartographers to choose what they want to preserve – angles, distances, areas, or shapes –  and what distortions they are willing to accept.

The distortions built into the most widely used map projection in the world are now increasingly criticised, especially in the global South. Compared with Europe, the vast continent of Africa appears significantly reduced. Gabby Asare Otchere-Darko, founder of the non-profit organisation “Africa Prosperity Network”, calls this “cartographic colonialism”.

Map designed for navigation

It was in 1569 when a cartographer named Gerhard Mercator, working in Duisburg, published a map “Ad Usum Navigantium” – explicitly intended for navigators. At the time, sea routes had become central to European trade and warfare. Ships needed a reliable way to reach ports and anchorages in “newly discovered” territories in Africa, the Americas, and Asia. The advantage of the Mercator map was its practicality: lines of longitude run parallel, so a course can be drawn as a straight line. A sailor crossing the Atlantic could simply keep a constant “West-Southwest” compass heading.

To make this possible, however, Mercator had to stretch the map more and more toward the poles. His quest to preserve coastlines introduced distortions that still shape how the world is perceived.

One “error” did not matter much in the age of sailing: a straight line on a Mercator map is not the shortest route. Today it does matter: “If I want to fly the shortest route from Frankfurt to San Francisco, the aircraft has to constantly change its heading,” explains a Lufthansa captain.

Another distortion is even more striking: the farther north or south a country lies, the more its area is stretched. Greenland, for example, appears larger than Africa or South America. In reality, Greenland is around 14 times smaller than Africa. Did US President Trump know that when he developed his land-grabbing thirst?

“A visual injustice”

For a long time, many people accepted these distortions as harmless technical flaws. But in Africa, pressure has been growing to stop treating the continent’s cartographic shrinking as inevitable. Moky Makura, director of the African non-profit “Africanofilter”, calls the Mercator projection a “visual injustice” rooted in colonial-era prejudice, one that downplays Africa’s true size and importance. The African Union (AU), representing 55 states, now supports the campaign “Correct the map”. Its proposed alternative is the “Equal Earth Map”, developed in 2018. The Equal Earth projection keeps the true size relationship between continents and oceans while maintaining recognisable outlines.

On the Equal Earth map, the continents look closer to how they would appear to an astronaut viewing Earth from a distance — and Africa’s vast scale becomes unmistakable. Whether the world will ultimately agree to replace Mercator’s 500-year-old view remains to be seen.

Information: equal-earth.com