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Why you're wrong about Africa
Other | Tuesday 26th January 2016 | Omari
There are many misconceptions surrounding the continent of Africa. Details like its size, wealth and contribution to the wider world have been dramatically distorted. Here are some truths.
Most world maps depict a small and visually weak African continent whilst enlarging the ‘wealthier’ northern continents such as Europe and the United States.
(The common, familiar Mercator projection map. Source: Daily Mail UK)
Modern maps depict Greenland, a country of only 2,166,086 km2 as comparable to the size of the African continent. In reality, Africa occupies over 30 million km2, more than 10 times the size of Greenland.
The entire United States of America only manages to creep over a third of the size of Africa, coming in at just over, almost tying with China’s 9.5 million km2.
Russia, while dwarfing the USA and China only just makes it over 17 million km2, just over half of Africa’s 30 million km2.
To put the vastness of Africa into perspective, the entire continent of Europe only occupies 10.18 million km2.
(The more accurate Gall-Peters projection. Source: Daily Mail UK.)
Though this Gall-Peters projection is more accurate than the more familiar Mercator projection, it is still not perfect. One issue when mapping the earth accurately is its curve, making a perfect, flat map, very hard to create.
Many countries throughout history have used maps to depict themselves as larger and more imposing than they actually are. This is evidently still used by wealthier nations to impose fear and power through their size, diminishing other, larger coninents like Africa.
