The True Size of Africa Map by Kai Krause

Key points from the map

• The map fits the United States, China, India, Japan and much of Europe inside the outline of Africa.
• A table of 18 countries adds up to 30,102 thousand km², just under Africa’s 30,221 thousand km².
• Kai Krause says the layout is for visualisation only, with some countries cut and rotated, while the table gives the exact data.
• A side table lists the 100 largest countries by area, which together cover 89.34% of the world total.

All figures are from the graphic, whose Top 100 table cites Britannica, Wikipedia and the Almanac 2010.

The True Size of Africa in text

Title: The True Size of Africa. Subtitle: A small contribution in the fight against rampant Immappancy, by Kai Krause. Note under the title: “Graphic layout for visualization only (some countries are cut and rotated). But the conclusions are very accurate: refer to table below for exact data.”

Labels inside the outline of Africa: United States, China, China part 2, India, India part 2, Japan, UK (over Madagascar), Spain, Portugal, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany, Italy and Eastern Europe. Grey pieces fill the gaps. Five small maps on the right show Africa with one area overlaid in blue: United States, Europe, India, Japan, China.

Country	Area (thousand km²)
China	9,597
USA	9,629
India	3,287
Mexico	1,964
Peru	1,285
France	633
Spain	506
Papua New Guinea	462
Sweden	441
Japan	378
Germany	357
Norway	324
Italy	301
New Zealand	270
United Kingdom	243
Nepal	147
Bangladesh	144
Greece	132
Total	30,102
Africa	30,221

Text block: “In addition to the well known social issues of illiteracy and innumeracy, there also should be such a concept as ‘immappancy’, meaning insufficient geographical knowledge. A survey with random American schoolkids let them guess the population and land area of their country. Not entirely unexpected, but still rather unsettling, the majority chose ‘1-2 billion’ and ‘largest in the world’, respectively. Even with Asian and European college students, geographical estimates were often off by factors of 2-3. This is partly due to the highly distorted nature of the predominantly used mapping projections (such as Mercator). A particularly extreme example is the worldwide misjudgement of the true size of Africa. This single image tries to embody the massive scale, which is larger than the USA, China, India, Japan and all of Europe……. combined!”

Footer: (cc) creative commons, No Rights Reserved. This work is placed in the Public Domain.

Top 100 Countries. Area in square kilometers, Percentage of World Total. Sources: Britannica, Wikipedia, Almanac 2010. The graphic prints the numbers in European style (17.098.242 and 11,50); we show them with UK separators.

Rank	Country	Area (km²)	% of world
1	Russia	17,098,242	11.50
2	Canada	9,984,670	6.70
3	China	9,596,961	6.40
4	United States	9,629,091	6.40
5	Brazil	8,514,877	5.70
6	Australia	7,692,024	5.20
7	India	3,287,263	2.30
8	Argentina	2,780,400	2.00
9	Kazakhstan	2,724,900	1.80
10	Sudan	2,505,813	1.70
11	Algeria	2,381,741	1.60
12	Congo	2,344,858	1.60
13	Greenland	2,166,086	1.50
14	Saudi Arabia	2,149,690	1.40
15	Mexico	1,964,375	1.30
16	Indonesia	1,860,360	1.30
17	Libya	1,759,540	1.20
18	Iran	1,628,750	1.10
19	Mongolia	1,564,100	1.10
20	Peru	1,285,216	0.86
21	Chad	1,284,000	0.86
22	Niger	1,267,000	0.85
23	Angola	1,246,700	0.85
24	Mali	1,240,192	0.83
25	South Africa	1,221,037	0.82
26	Colombia	1,141,748	0.76
27	Ethiopia	1,104,300	0.74
28	Bolivia	1,098,581	0.74
29	Mauritania	1,025,520	0.69
30	Egypt	1,002,000	0.67
31	Tanzania	945,087	0.63
32	Nigeria	923,768	0.62
33	Venezuela	912,050	0.61
34	Namibia	824,116	0.55
35	Mozambique	801,590	0.54
36	Pakistan	796,095	0.53
37	Turkey	783,562	0.53
38	Chile	756,102	0.51
39	Zambia	752,612	0.51
40	Myanmar	676,578	0.45
41	Afghanistan	652,090	0.44
42	Somalia	637,657	0.43
43	France	632,834	0.43
44	C. African Rep	622,984	0.42
45	Ukraine	603,500	0.41
46	Madagascar	587,041	0.39
47	Botswana	582,000	0.39
48	Kenya	580,367	0.39
49	Yemen	527,968	0.35
50	Thailand	513,120	0.34
51	Spain	505,992	0.34
52	Turkmenistan	488,100	0.33
53	Cameroon	475,442	0.32
54	Papua New Guinea	462,840	0.31
55	Uzbekistan	447,400	0.30
56	Morocco	446,550	0.30
57	Sweden	441,370	0.30
58	Iraq	438,317	0.29
59	Paraguay	406,752	0.27
60	Zimbabwe	390,757	0.26
61	Japan	377,930	0.25
62	Germany	357,114	0.24
63	Rep. of Congo	342,000	0.23
64	Finland	338,419	0.23
65	Vietnam	331,212	0.22
66	Malaysia	330,803	0.22
67	Norway	323,802	0.22
68	Côte d’Ivoire	322,463	0.22
69	Poland	312,685	0.21
70	Oman	309,500	0.21
71	Italy	301,336	0.20
72	Philippines	300,000	0.20
73	Burkina Faso	274,222	0.18
74	New Zealand	270,467	0.18
75	Gabon	267,668	0.18
76	Western Sahara	266,000	0.18
77	Ecuador	256,369	0.20
78	Guinea	245,857	0.17
79	United Kingdom	242,900	0.16
80	Uganda	241,038	0.16
81	Ghana	238,539	0.16
82	Romania	238,391	0.16
83	Laos	236,800	0.16
84	Guyana	214,969	0.14
85	Belarus	207,600	0.14
86	Kyrgyzstan	199,951	0.13
87	Senegal	196,722	0.13
88	Syria	185,180	0.12
89	Cambodia	181,035	0.12
90	Uruguay	176,215	0.12
91	Suriname	163,820	0.11
92	Tunisia	163,610	0.11
93	Nepal	147,181	0.10
94	Bangladesh	143,998	0.10
95	Tajikistan	143,100	0.10
96	Greece	131,957	0.09
97	Nicaragua	130,373	0.09
98	North Korea	120,538	0.08
99	Malawi	118,484	0.08
100	Eritrea	117,600	0.08
	Top 100 total	132,632,524	89.34

How big Africa really is

Africa covers about 30.3 million km², including its islands, which is around 20% of the Earth’s land area [3]. That is close to the graphic’s figure of 30,221 thousand km². By the graphic’s own US figure of 9.629 million km², Africa could hold the United States about three times over (our arithmetic).

Krause explains that he first made a version of the map in the mid 1980s and put this one together for a Royal Geographical Society exhibition of unusual maps; it spread widely online in 2010 after Stephen Fry shared it [1]. He stresses that it was never meant as an accurate map, only as a picture of one fact: Africa is far larger than most people assume [1]. Some readers objected that the UK is not the size of Madagascar; Krause replies that this is the point, since Madagascar is much larger [1].

Why maps make Africa look small

Most people learn the world’s shape from the Mercator projection. Gerardus Mercator presented it in 1569 for navigation, and it inflates land areas the further they are from the equator [4]. Krause gives the example of Greenland, which looks on a Mercator map as if it were the size of South America [1]. Africa sits across the equator, so it is stretched far less and looks small beside the inflated northern lands. Mercator maps remain common through web mapping, although commercial atlases have largely moved to other projections [4].

Notes on this infographic

• The US area in both tables (9.629 million km²) includes Alaska and Hawaii, which are not part of the map; Krause notes this in a later version [1][2]. Total US area estimates range from 9,629,091 to 9,866,624 km² [5].
• The left table lists China (9,597) above the USA (9,629) even though the US figure is larger. Krause’s later version lists the USA first and gives China as 9,573 [2].
• The Top 100 table dates from 2010 (it cites the Almanac 2010), so some entries no longer match current borders, and it lists Greenland as a country.
• Our copy is small, so the Top 100 digits were taken from Krause’s high resolution PDF of the same table [2] and spot checked against our image. Ecuador’s share is printed as 0,20 in that PDF, which looks like a slip for about 0.17, the value our copy appears to show.
• Europe is shown only in part: Eastern Europe is one piece and several countries are not labelled.

Questions about the true size of Africa

How big is Africa?

About 30.3 million km² (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, around 20% of the world’s land area [3].

How many United States can fit into Africa?

About three, by area. The graphic gives Africa as 30,221 thousand km² and the USA as 9,629 thousand km², a ratio of roughly 3.1 (our arithmetic) [5].

What is the true size of Africa compared with other countries?

Larger than the United States, China, India and Japan put together, with room left for much of Europe, which is the point of Kai Krause’s map [1].

Sources

1. Kai Krause, The True Size of Africa, his page about the map (read via the Wayback Machine copy of 30 May 2015).
2. Kai Krause, True Size of Africa, version 3, PDF (archived copy), used for the Top 100 table digits.
3. Wikipedia, Africa.
4. Wikipedia, Mercator projection.
5. Wikipedia, United States (total area).

Last reviewed 30 October 2026