Africa is so big that the United States, China, and India all fit inside it at once.
France, Germany, Spain, the U.K., and Italy together cover about 760,000 sq mi. How many copies of all five fit in the space that’s left?
How they look on a common world map (Mercator)
Add countries to Africa until it’s full. Start with the big three.
So why does Africa look smaller on most wall maps?
The most familiar world maps (Mercator-style) stretch land more the farther it is from the equator. Europe, North America, and Russia get blown up. Africa sits right on the equator, so it barely grows.
A map can be useful and still lie about size. Before comparing areas, ask what kind of map you’re looking at.
You’re making a dot map of forests: one dot for every 1,000 sq mi (2,600 km²) of forest. Which map makes the dots look equally packed wherever forest is equally thick?
Mercator stretches land far from the equator, so Canada’s dots would spread over extra paper and its forests would look thinner than Brazil’s. A map that keeps areas true matches paper to real land everywhere.
On a Mercator map, Alaska looks several times bigger than Libya in North Africa. How do they really compare?
Alaska: about 665,000 sq mi. Libya: about 679,000 sq mi. Libya is actually a little bigger. Alaska just sits far from the equator.
The farther a place is from the equator, the more a familiar map exaggerates it.
Sources: total areas rounded from the CIA World Factbook (U.S. figure is the lower 48 states; France is metropolitan France). Map on screen 1: Natural Earth.