Africa is 14 Greenlands big
On the Mercator world map, Greenland and Africa look about the same size. Here is Greenland at its true, equal-area scale — laid over Africa 14 times.
Greenland is the Mercator projection's biggest victim — or beneficiary. Sitting mostly above 60°N, it gets inflated more than almost any other landmass, until it looks like a rival to Africa. At true scale, Africa is about 14 times larger: 30.4M km² vs 2.17M km².
Each shape above is Greenland drawn with an equal-area projection at exactly the same scale as Africa — rotated freely, since only area is the claim, not orientation. The 14 shapes together cover 30.3M km², matching Africa almost exactly — and you can watch the fit get harder as the numbers climb: the first seven drop in cleanly, then the remaining pieces have to squeeze into whatever coastal slivers are left. Real coastlines can't tile perfectly, so wherever a Greenland overhangs the coast, an equal patch of Africa shows through somewhere else.
Companion to our Africa vs. the US, China, India, and Europe map — same projection, same scale, same lesson.
Areas: CIA World Factbook (Africa ≈ 30.4M km², Greenland ≈ 2.17M km², ratio ≈ 14.0). Shapes: Natural Earth. Every Greenland uses its own azimuthal equal-area projection at the Africa map's scale, so all 15 shapes on this map are directly comparable.