
Strange Maps: Did you realize Africa is this big? - mattjaynes
http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2006/11/20/35-the-size-of-africa/
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chairface
I think my perception of Africa's size comes entirely from the fact that it's
only worth 3 armies in Risk.

~~~
falsestprophet
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> _

~~~
markessien
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
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.

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

~~~
alecco
It's funny how most people from the northern hemisphere don't know their world
maps look funny. Particularly European versions.

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markessien
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.

~~~
ochiba
Except for South Africa of course, the wealthiest country on the continent.

~~~
markessien
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.

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jamii
Theres a fascinating book called "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
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.

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mattjaynes
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
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
> 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
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.

------
kirubakaran
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
DFW Airport is actually billed as "Larger than the island of Manhattan".

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

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cousin_it
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....](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Winkel-tripel-
projection.jpg)

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Xichekolas
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
And what is startling to me is that US is 3 times the size of India.

~~~
ObieJazz
...yet has about 2/7x the people.

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paul9290
Are you talking about the continent or the country :)

~~~
demallien
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.

~~~
tdavis
I think more surprising is how easy it is to be Geographically ignorant. I
have been to roughly 20 different countries and would be hard pressed to
locate some of them on a map. Honestly, who cares where Kyrgyzstan is? ;)

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

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biohacker42
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.

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boredguy8
Get a globe.

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Jasber
What happened to Alaska!?

