Nº 007 The map is lying

Russia Isn't Bigger Than Africa. Not Even Close.

On a Mercator map Russia looks bigger than Africa. Africa is about 1.8 times larger. We slid Russia to the equator on a globe, keeping its true size, and re-projected it. The shrink is the real Mercator distortion (sec² of latitude).

Watch the Short

Sources

• Russia 17,098,246 km²
• Africa ~30.37M km², 54 countries
• Our own spherical-area calculation on Natural Earth 50m data: Africa 30.0M km², Russia 16.9M km² (ratio 1.78).