He does but I can't understand his rationale. He claims it's "just a symbolic image - it may as well have been just blobs to tell the story" and "Had I stretch

He does but I can't understand his rationale. He claims it's "just a symbolic image - it may as well have been just blobs to tell the story" and "Had I stretched things to truly properly show that though, then the whole shape of Africa would have looked very awkwardly elongated." But why? One could scale the outlines so that they have the correct relative area whilst they preserve shape. I think it's just a poorly-designed map.