Why All Maps are Wrong about Africa

Take a look at any map of the world. As most maps in schools do, then your whole perception of our world is incredibly inaccurate. We all know that Africa is big, it is in fact a gargantuan place which is something that our maps have often failed to portray. However, despite the common perception that Africa is a large landmass, it’s still one that is vastly underestimated by most casual map viewers. As map nerds already know, this is due to the common use of the Mercator projection. The Mercator projection has distorted our geographical view of the world in a crucial way - one that often leads to misconceptions about the relative sizes of countries and continents. Because the world is a sphere, it is impossible to draw it on a flat surface without distorting it in some way. It's almost impossible to get it to lie flat. Our perception and interpretation of big countries is different compared to small ones because bigger countries appear more powerful and intimidating, so when we shrink and stretch countrie