How Big is Africa?

How Big is Africa and is it big compared to other countries?

Source: https://face2faceafrica.com/

The second-largest continent of the world and the second-most populous continent following Asia is Africa. This vast continent covers about 6% of the world’s surface area, having about 30.3 million kilometers square area. This size is approximately twice the size of Russia or a little bit bigger than the combination of Canada, united states and china all put together.

Africa looks quite more extensive than its real size because of the use of Mercator Projection which causes countries in the equatorial region to appear smaller than their actual size when compared to the continents in the polar regions.

Just as every other continent is surrounded by oceanic bodies that determine climate and bulk of vegetation, Africa is encompassed in the North by the Mediterranean Sea which separates it from the European continent, in the northeast lies the Isthmus of Suez and the Red Sea which separates it from Asia. The South East Region has the abundance of the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean to the Western part. Islands such as Madagascar and some other archipelagos are inclusive in the African continent.

Being the second-largest too in terms of the population just behind the most populous Asia, the continent holds about 1.2 billion people as of the year 2016, which makes up for 16% of the world’s total population.

Africa is made up of over 54 sovereign states, nine territories and also includes two de facto independent states that have little or no recognition. 32 countries out of the 54 countries are concentrated more at the southern hemisphere which includes; Zambia, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, South Africa and a host of other popular countries. Of the three high southward projections from the largest earth’s landmass, Africa is the largest. Its coastline is about 26,000km long and has no deep indentations in its shores.

The largest country in Africa is Algeria and has a population of about 35,406,303 also in 2012. The extent of Algeria’s size allows it to share boundaries with up to 7 countries including Libya, Mali, Morocco, and Tunisia.

The smallest country in Africa is Seychelles, and it is most times not considered as a country but as an archipelago found at the east of Africa’s coast.

In the continent’s mainland, the smallest nation existing therein is Gambia.

We cannot talk about the size of Africa without talking about the tectonic plates. The tectonic plate in Africa is called the African plate and is a primary tectonic plate that includes most of the African continent as well as the oceanic crust.

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The African climate is wide-ranged from tropical to subarctic which allows the vast biomes. The dominant biome in the north is the arid land or dessert while the central areas and southern areas have abundant savannah biomes in their varieties and dense rain forests. These factors coupled with the temperature differences allows Africa to possess vast species of plant and animals’ species and also enriched with several mineral resources that Africa has become a major source of petroleum and other biological resources in the whole world.