Why the Misconception? Interestingly, the problem with maps is not that Africa is sized incorrectly. Using the animation below, you’ll see that Africa is actually the most accurately sized continent using the common Mercator map projection. The Mercator projection attempts to place the spherical shape of the world onto a cylinder, causing areas closest to the poles to be “stretched”. Africa, which straddles the Equator, barely changes in size — meanwhile, the countries furthest from the Equator become inflated from their true sizes on this type of map.

The True Size of Africa Take a look at any map, and it’s clear that the African continent is a big place. However, despite the common perception that Africa is a large landmass, it’s still one that is vastly underestimated by most casual map viewers. The reason for this is that the familiar Mercator map projection tends to distort our geographical view of the world in a crucial way — one that often leads to misconceptions about the relative sizes of both countries and continents. The African continent has a land area of 30.37 million sq km (11.7 million sq mi) — enough to fit in the U.S., China, India, Japan, Mexico, and many European nations, combined.