Africa is bigger than you think
The United States, China, and Japan — every shape drawn at true, equal-area scale — all placed inside Africa at once. And there's still room for India, most of Europe, Mexico, and Alaska in the space left over.
| United States (lower 48 states) | 8.1M km² |
| China | 9.6M km² |
| Japan | 0.4M km² |
| Room still left inside Africa — enough for India (≈3.3M), most of Europe (≈5.2M), Mexico (≈2.0M), and Alaska (≈1.7M) | ≈12.3M km² |
| Africa | 30.4M km² |
Why does this feel wrong? Because the world map most people grew up with — the Mercator projection — inflates land the farther it is from the equator. The US, China, Europe, and Japan all sit well north, so they get stretched; Africa sits on the equator, so it doesn't. On a Mercator map, Africa and Greenland look comparable. In reality, Africa is about 14 times larger than Greenland.
Every shape on this map is drawn with an equal-area projection, which is the whole point: same rules for everyone, no latitude bonus.
Land areas: CIA World Factbook, rounded. Country shapes: Natural Earth. Each shape is projected with its own equal-area projection centered on that country, all at identical scale — so shapes appear as they do in an atlas of their own region, and areas are directly comparable.