Over the weekend, former FNB CEO and venture capitalist Michael Jordaan set Twitter alight with maps showing the sheer geographic scale of Africa:
Africa is huge pic.twitter.com/5ZqlYnXBSU
— Michael Jordaan (@MichaelJordaan) November 3, 2018
The maps were designed by the German software and graphics designer, Kai Krause, who a few years ago changed the way people look at the continent by creating a map that showed Africa is larger than the US, China, India and all of Europe, combined.
While South Africa is only the ninth biggest country on this huge continent (Algeria, the biggest, is almost double the size of South Africa) - compared to European countries, South Africa is positively massive.
We used the cool online tool MapFight to compare country sizes:
South Africa (1,221,037 km²) is five times bigger than United Kingdom (242,900 km²)
South Africa is more than three times the size of Germany:
And 33 times bigger than the Netherlands:
South Africa is also 1.3 times bigger than its biggest economic competitor on the continent, Nigeria, which houses 190 million people - compared to our 58 million
But South Africa is tiny compared to some other countries:
Australia is 6.3 times bigger than South Africa
The US is 6.7 times bigger than South Africa.
Brazil is 7 times bigger:
And China is almost 10 times larger than South Africa:
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