6 ms·

Strange Maps: Did you realize Africa is this big?

39 points by mattjaynes 18y ago

mattjaynes 18y ago
I was pretty surprised at how completely inaccurate my perception of Africa's size was. This map really helped put it in perspective. It also made me think about the potential wealth of Africa. It will be interesting to see how it continues to transform with technology and micro-entrepreneurship.
- Maktab 18y ago
  At the same time, this also sheds some more light on Africa's problems. One of which is logistics. The continent's security is hampered by its sheer size and the massive borders of many of its countries. What this means it that few countries have the funds for large and capable enough security forces to exercise control over the whole of their territory. So outside the cities, large parts of the countryside exist in a security vacuum where thugs, rebels, criminals and assorted other unsavoury types essentially have free reign. It also hampers trade and communication. With communities being spread out over such huge distances, transport infrastructure and the associated costs become vital. But few African nations can afford to maintain proper highway networks and even if they could, there's a lack of sufficient transport capability to effectively utilise it. As a result, intra-state trade is severely limited and inter-state trade even more so. This logistics problem also affects the delivery of aid. To be fair, this isn't true of all African countries. South Africa and Egypt, for example, are notable exceptions for having a security presence throughout the country, a well-developed and advanced transport infrastructure and so on. But bringing countries like the DRC, CAR & Uganda up to the same level is not going to be an easy task. One hope lies in having less of a top-down socialist central-planning approach and more encouragement of a federal self-organising entrepreneurial environment to encourage communities to grow themselves and gradually build their own transport and communications networks outwards. Technology will make this easier, but I think anybody expecting an economic revolution in Africa anytime soon is holding on to a false hope.
  - anamax 18y ago
    > What this means it that few countries have the funds for large and capable enough security forces to exercise control over the whole of their territory. Through the majority of US and Canadian history, the same could be said of both countries. (Canada did send the mounties out in advance of the settlers, but there weren't enough of them.) Let me suggest that the problem is not the lack of security forces but the need for them, especially since they tend to turn into "thugs, rebels, criminals and assorted other unsavoury types".
    - Maktab 18y ago
      Interesting comparison, but it's not really the same situation. In the case of the US and Canada there were large border regions that were essentially frontier societies with little protection offered by the state, but the major population centres and the areas between them were generally safe. And as time went on, the expansion of both countries were driven in large part by the expansion of their armed forces and the gradual extension of control over more and more of the country. Aside from a few hardy settlers, there were no large population groupings living in areas in which the state had not yet established a basic level of control. The societies expanded their territory only as the security umbrella which protected them grew larger. For many African countries, such as the DRC, this is not the case. They have inherited borders and population groupings that date from colonial eras and have more to do with arbitrary lines drawn on a map than the actual ability of each country to enforce or protect them. As a result there is seldom a single point of origin from which to begin the creation of a security umbrella and then expand outwards; instead they have to individually try to secure a number of cities and towns situated far apart from each other while trying desperately to get a hand on the largely undeveloped and un-patrolled areas in between. To use the DRC as an example, the national army has virtually no control over the land between Kinshasa, the capital, and cities like Goma and North Kivu. There is no proper level of internal security. To be fair, your point about the quality (or lack thereof) of African security forces is valid. There's no doubt that if more African armies were well-trained, disciplined and professional they would be able to make far more effective use of the limited resources available to them. Unfortunately, most are as useless and corrupt as the political hierarchies governing their countries. But my point was that even with well-trained forces, the vast distances across which many African countries stretch make an already difficult situation so much harder to deal with on the tiny budgets most African countries have available. And that even those who do attempt to get their act together are dragged down by the fact that trade, the one thing that could lift them out of poverty, is often severely restricted by geography.
- cglee 18y ago
  I wasn't surprised. Africa is the world's second largest continent, it should be about the size of a collection of countries.
- Jem 18y ago
  > I was pretty surprised at how completely inaccurate my perception of Africa's size was. Likewise. I'd always had it pegged as smaller than the USA. The shocking thing is that I got a high grade for Geography when I was in school (what are we teaching our kids?!)
- DLWormwood 18y ago
  > It also made me think about the potential wealth of Africa. Not really... before seeing this map, I've long known that the Sahara desert is larger than the continental U.S. Besides the logistics problems mentioned in other comments, this large block of non-producing land, which separates the fertile parts of the continent from Europe and Asia, is a key reason why the continent has historically been disadvantaged. (It's quite possible the creation of the Sahara is what encouraged the first proto-humans into leave the continent to colonize the rest of the world.)
Xichekolas 18y ago
More startling to me was the fact that India is roughly a third of the size of the US, yet has about 3.5x the people. For some reason I thought India was much bigger than it is.
- paraschopra 18y ago
  And what is startling to me is that US is 3 times the size of India.
  - ObieJazz 18y ago
    ...yet has about 2/7x the people.
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
danw 18y ago
The dymaxion map reduces distortion: http://www.csn.ul.ie/~caolan/pub/xplanet/fuller_1280x640.jpg http://www.csn.ul.ie/~caolan/pub/xplanet/fuller_1280x640.jpg
- alecco 18y ago
  It's funny how most people from the northern hemisphere don't know their world maps look funny. Particularly European versions.
- DLWormwood 18y ago
  I wonder if this was the map Larry Niven was thinking of when he put a "Map of Earth" on the Ringworld?
- danw 18y ago
  Here's an animation showing how the map is folded out from the globe: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=vfOcYUWfVqE http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=vfOcYUWfVqE
paul9290 18y ago
Are you talking about the continent or the country :)
- jeroen 18y ago
  There is no country called Africa. You may have been thinking of the Republic of South Africa.
  - helveticaman 18y ago
    This was a reference to a certain politician's confusion as to whether Africa was a country or continent.
    - Maktab 18y ago
      Alleged confusion, judging by the latest reports. It looks like the story's source doesn't actually exist and has pulled similar hoaxes in the past. Not that I like Palin, but then again I'm a fan of disliking politicians based on the merits of what they have really said and done.
      - robg 18y ago
        Not quite right. One on-record verifier of the story was a hoax. The original source has not yet been outed.
    - jeroen 18y ago
      My bad. That probably didn't get as much coverage on this side of the ocean, so I missed it.
- demallien 18y ago
  bwahahahaha, très drôle! You probably needed to stick big blinking irony tags around it though - those of us living in the rest of the world have a poor opinion of American geographical knowledge (justified by the incident to which you refer), and sometimes we forget that the US actually has quite a lot of very well educated individuals.
jsmcgd 18y ago
The Mercator projection has a lot to answer for. Did you know that Sudan is the 10th largest country in the world?
markessien 18y ago
One thing that many people don't also realise is that Africa is internally broken into 3 or 4 major blocs. West Africa from Senegal through to Cameroun are a bloc, central Africa another, the horn, another and the southern countries. West African countries have relatively good communication and transport across themselves, but not to the southern countries. The average American probably knows a lot more about the Congo than the average Nigerian, hard as that may be for you to believe.
- danw 18y ago
  Here's a map for those who, like me, found your description hard to visualise: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Africa-regions.png http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Africa-regions.png
- ochiba 18y ago
  Except for South Africa of course, the wealthiest country on the continent.
  - markessien 18y ago
    South Africa and Namibia are very close economically and culturally. Same with the two small countries in SA, and I believe Zimbabwe used to have a lot of trade too, before the latest problems. South Africa is rich, but the West African economic zone is almost as rich.
parenthesis 18y ago
I had an equal-area projection map on my wall as a teenager ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_area_projection#Equal-area http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_area_projection#Equal-are... ), so this didn't come as news to me.
chairface 18y ago
I think my perception of Africa's size comes entirely from the fact that it's only worth 3 armies in Risk.
- falsestprophet 18y ago
  That perception may be too generous. The GDP of the combined African Union countries is less than that of the Netherlands. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Union#Economy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Union#Economy
  - markessien 18y ago
    What are you talking about? The GDP of the AU is 1 and a half trillion, and of Netherlands is 600 billion. South Africa alone has a GDP of 500 billion.
    - falsestprophet 18y ago
      You know full well that I am referring to the about the nominal GDP, while you are referring to the GDP at purchasing power parity. Both are interesting economics measures. You should not be too surprised that I choose the more surprising one to write about.
kirubakaran 18y ago
Another fun fact that impressed me: If you dumped all the people of the world in Texas, it will have the same population density as New York city.
- zacharydanger 18y ago
  DFW Airport is actually billed as "Larger than the island of Manhattan".
boredguy8 18y ago
Get a globe.
cousin_it 18y ago
As a map nut I take this opportunity to plug the Winkel-Tripel projection that National Geographic chose ten years ago. It's quite beautifully balanced despite being neither equal-area nor equal-angle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Winkel-tripel-projection.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Winkel-tripel-projection....
biohacker42 18y ago
Yes I do, because I own a globe. No, that's not a "strange map". This shouldn't surprise you if you're over the age of 12 and you are not named Sarah Palin.
Jasber 18y ago
What happened to Alaska!?
jamii 18y ago
Theres a fascinating book called "Guns, Germs and Steel" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel) which attempts to explain why Eurasia was a dominant force for almost the entire history of civilisation, despite that fact that humans evolved in Africa. The main idea is that Eurasia had a massive advantage in farmable crops (that is crops which were amenable to farming after a small number of mutations) and domesticable animals large enough to replace manual labour. In addition, the climatic differences across Eurasia are smaller than in Africa or the Americas so domesticated species were useful over a larger area. Agriculture supports higher population densities (larger armies) which in turn leads to specialisation (guns and steel) and highly evolved germs to which the local population is resistant (during Spanish colonisation of Whether or not you agree with the specific ideas its amazing that its even possible to consider the question and produce an answer that is, at least in part, empirically falsifiable.
- olifante 18y ago
  Probably the best non-fiction book I read in the last 10 years. It puts forward many reasoned arguments for the Eurasian historical supremacy (the Guns, Germs and Steel of the title), but as you say, the crux of it is that Eurasia is the continent with the largest contiguous area of similar climate. In other words, Eurasia is wide, while North America is narrow, and South America and Africa are both tall and narrow, resulting in very large climatic diversity, and smaller ecosystems adapted to each of those climates.

39 points by mattjaynes 18y ago

I was pretty surprised at how completely inaccurate my perception of Africa's size was. This map really helped put it in perspective. It also made me think about the potential wealth of Africa. It will be interesting to see how it continues to transform with technology and micro-entrepreneurship.

Maktab 18y ago
At the same time, this also sheds some more light on Africa's problems. One of which is logistics. The continent's security is hampered by its sheer size and the massive borders of many of its countries. What this means it that few countries have the funds for large and capable enough security forces to exercise control over the whole of their territory. So outside the cities, large parts of the countryside exist in a security vacuum where thugs, rebels, criminals and assorted other unsavoury types essentially have free reign. It also hampers trade and communication. With communities being spread out over such huge distances, transport infrastructure and the associated costs become vital. But few African nations can afford to maintain proper highway networks and even if they could, there's a lack of sufficient transport capability to effectively utilise it. As a result, intra-state trade is severely limited and inter-state trade even more so. This logistics problem also affects the delivery of aid. To be fair, this isn't true of all African countries. South Africa and Egypt, for example, are notable exceptions for having a security presence throughout the country, a well-developed and advanced transport infrastructure and so on. But bringing countries like the DRC, CAR & Uganda up to the same level is not going to be an easy task. One hope lies in having less of a top-down socialist central-planning approach and more encouragement of a federal self-organising entrepreneurial environment to encourage communities to grow themselves and gradually build their own transport and communications networks outwards. Technology will make this easier, but I think anybody expecting an economic revolution in Africa anytime soon is holding on to a false hope.
- anamax 18y ago
  > What this means it that few countries have the funds for large and capable enough security forces to exercise control over the whole of their territory. Through the majority of US and Canadian history, the same could be said of both countries. (Canada did send the mounties out in advance of the settlers, but there weren't enough of them.) Let me suggest that the problem is not the lack of security forces but the need for them, especially since they tend to turn into "thugs, rebels, criminals and assorted other unsavoury types".
  - Maktab 18y ago
    Interesting comparison, but it's not really the same situation. In the case of the US and Canada there were large border regions that were essentially frontier societies with little protection offered by the state, but the major population centres and the areas between them were generally safe. And as time went on, the expansion of both countries were driven in large part by the expansion of their armed forces and the gradual extension of control over more and more of the country. Aside from a few hardy settlers, there were no large population groupings living in areas in which the state had not yet established a basic level of control. The societies expanded their territory only as the security umbrella which protected them grew larger. For many African countries, such as the DRC, this is not the case. They have inherited borders and population groupings that date from colonial eras and have more to do with arbitrary lines drawn on a map than the actual ability of each country to enforce or protect them. As a result there is seldom a single point of origin from which to begin the creation of a security umbrella and then expand outwards; instead they have to individually try to secure a number of cities and towns situated far apart from each other while trying desperately to get a hand on the largely undeveloped and un-patrolled areas in between. To use the DRC as an example, the national army has virtually no control over the land between Kinshasa, the capital, and cities like Goma and North Kivu. There is no proper level of internal security. To be fair, your point about the quality (or lack thereof) of African security forces is valid. There's no doubt that if more African armies were well-trained, disciplined and professional they would be able to make far more effective use of the limited resources available to them. Unfortunately, most are as useless and corrupt as the political hierarchies governing their countries. But my point was that even with well-trained forces, the vast distances across which many African countries stretch make an already difficult situation so much harder to deal with on the tiny budgets most African countries have available. And that even those who do attempt to get their act together are dragged down by the fact that trade, the one thing that could lift them out of poverty, is often severely restricted by geography.
cglee 18y ago
I wasn't surprised. Africa is the world's second largest continent, it should be about the size of a collection of countries.
Jem 18y ago
> I was pretty surprised at how completely inaccurate my perception of Africa's size was. Likewise. I'd always had it pegged as smaller than the USA. The shocking thing is that I got a high grade for Geography when I was in school (what are we teaching our kids?!)
DLWormwood 18y ago
> It also made me think about the potential wealth of Africa. Not really... before seeing this map, I've long known that the Sahara desert is larger than the continental U.S. Besides the logistics problems mentioned in other comments, this large block of non-producing land, which separates the fertile parts of the continent from Europe and Asia, is a key reason why the continent has historically been disadvantaged. (It's quite possible the creation of the Sahara is what encouraged the first proto-humans into leave the continent to colonize the rest of the world.)

Xichekolas 18y ago

More startling to me was the fact that India is roughly a third of the size of the US, yet has about 3.5x the people. For some reason I thought India was much bigger than it is.

paraschopra 18y ago
And what is startling to me is that US is 3 times the size of India.
- ObieJazz 18y ago
  ...yet has about 2/7x the people.

deleted 18y ago

[deleted]

danw 18y ago

The dymaxion map reduces distortion: http://www.csn.ul.ie/~caolan/pub/xplanet/fuller_1280x640.jpg http://www.csn.ul.ie/~caolan/pub/xplanet/fuller_1280x640.jpg

alecco 18y ago
It's funny how most people from the northern hemisphere don't know their world maps look funny. Particularly European versions.
DLWormwood 18y ago
I wonder if this was the map Larry Niven was thinking of when he put a "Map of Earth" on the Ringworld?
danw 18y ago
Here's an animation showing how the map is folded out from the globe: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=vfOcYUWfVqE http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=vfOcYUWfVqE

paul9290 18y ago

Are you talking about the continent or the country :)

jeroen 18y ago
There is no country called Africa. You may have been thinking of the Republic of South Africa.
- helveticaman 18y ago
  This was a reference to a certain politician's confusion as to whether Africa was a country or continent.
  - Maktab 18y ago
    Alleged confusion, judging by the latest reports. It looks like the story's source doesn't actually exist and has pulled similar hoaxes in the past. Not that I like Palin, but then again I'm a fan of disliking politicians based on the merits of what they have really said and done.
    - robg 18y ago
      Not quite right. One on-record verifier of the story was a hoax. The original source has not yet been outed.
  - jeroen 18y ago
    My bad. That probably didn't get as much coverage on this side of the ocean, so I missed it.
demallien 18y ago
bwahahahaha, très drôle! You probably needed to stick big blinking irony tags around it though - those of us living in the rest of the world have a poor opinion of American geographical knowledge (justified by the incident to which you refer), and sometimes we forget that the US actually has quite a lot of very well educated individuals.

jsmcgd 18y ago

The Mercator projection has a lot to answer for. Did you know that Sudan is the 10th largest country in the world?

markessien 18y ago

One thing that many people don't also realise is that Africa is internally broken into 3 or 4 major blocs. West Africa from Senegal through to Cameroun are a bloc, central Africa another, the horn, another and the southern countries. West African countries have relatively good communication and transport across themselves, but not to the southern countries. The average American probably knows a lot more about the Congo than the average Nigerian, hard as that may be for you to believe.

danw 18y ago
Here's a map for those who, like me, found your description hard to visualise: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Africa-regions.png http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Africa-regions.png
ochiba 18y ago
Except for South Africa of course, the wealthiest country on the continent.
- markessien 18y ago
  South Africa and Namibia are very close economically and culturally. Same with the two small countries in SA, and I believe Zimbabwe used to have a lot of trade too, before the latest problems. South Africa is rich, but the West African economic zone is almost as rich.

parenthesis 18y ago

I had an equal-area projection map on my wall as a teenager ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_area_projection#Equal-area http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_area_projection#Equal-are... ), so this didn't come as news to me.

chairface 18y ago

I think my perception of Africa's size comes entirely from the fact that it's only worth 3 armies in Risk.

falsestprophet 18y ago
That perception may be too generous. The GDP of the combined African Union countries is less than that of the Netherlands. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Union#Economy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Union#Economy
- markessien 18y ago
  What are you talking about? The GDP of the AU is 1 and a half trillion, and of Netherlands is 600 billion. South Africa alone has a GDP of 500 billion.
  - falsestprophet 18y ago
    You know full well that I am referring to the about the nominal GDP, while you are referring to the GDP at purchasing power parity. Both are interesting economics measures. You should not be too surprised that I choose the more surprising one to write about.

kirubakaran 18y ago

Another fun fact that impressed me: If you dumped all the people of the world in Texas, it will have the same population density as New York city.

zacharydanger 18y ago
DFW Airport is actually billed as "Larger than the island of Manhattan".

boredguy8 18y ago

Get a globe.

cousin_it 18y ago

As a map nut I take this opportunity to plug the Winkel-Tripel projection that National Geographic chose ten years ago. It's quite beautifully balanced despite being neither equal-area nor equal-angle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Winkel-tripel-projection.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Winkel-tripel-projection....

biohacker42 18y ago

Yes I do, because I own a globe. No, that's not a "strange map". This shouldn't surprise you if you're over the age of 12 and you are not named Sarah Palin.

Jasber 18y ago

What happened to Alaska!?

jamii 18y ago

Theres a fascinating book called "Guns, Germs and Steel" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel) which attempts to explain why Eurasia was a dominant force for almost the entire history of civilisation, despite that fact that humans evolved in Africa. The main idea is that Eurasia had a massive advantage in farmable crops (that is crops which were amenable to farming after a small number of mutations) and domesticable animals large enough to replace manual labour. In addition, the climatic differences across Eurasia are smaller than in Africa or the Americas so domesticated species were useful over a larger area. Agriculture supports higher population densities (larger armies) which in turn leads to specialisation (guns and steel) and highly evolved germs to which the local population is resistant (during Spanish colonisation of Whether or not you agree with the specific ideas its amazing that its even possible to consider the question and produce an answer that is, at least in part, empirically falsifiable.

olifante 18y ago
Probably the best non-fiction book I read in the last 10 years. It puts forward many reasoned arguments for the Eurasian historical supremacy (the Guns, Germs and Steel of the title), but as you say, the crux of it is that Eurasia is the continent with the largest contiguous area of similar climate. In other words, Eurasia is wide, while North America is narrow, and South America and Africa are both tall and narrow, resulting in very large climatic diversity, and smaller ecosystems adapted to each of those climates.