Africa is bigger than most Americans realize

Double click to enlarge.

When I learned geography in school, our maps for the Mercator projection, in which the lines of longitude are the same distance apart, all the way from the North and South Poles to the Equator.  This makes Greenland look larger than Africa, and islands in the Canadian north seem larger than important South American countries.

I knew this wasn’t so, but this map helps me to grasp just low large the continent of Africa is.  Africa is not all one country.  It is made up of many nations that are at least as diverse as Europe, even if you only look at the countries south of the Sahara.  I don’t know much about Africa, but I do know that much.