This cool image of Africa has been circulating around the web for awhile but I really like it and thought I'd repost it here.

I'm an undergraduate student studying international development (or international studies as it's called in politically correct terms - development is too laden a word for many…). And even in this discipline, we 'experts' usually speak about Africa like it's a single country. Often we describe it as poor, black, overcrowded, and hungry -  or some variation of the theme.

While that description is true in some parts of Africa it's certainly not true in all. This map helps give some idea of the possible diversity of Africa, simply because westerners (like me) usually don't realize just how big this continent is. Any place that is big enough to house the US, China, India, and Europe under one roof, makes me think that that place should be at least as diverse as these other regions. So hence, a simple change in the look of a map can cause a reconsideration of your fixed ideas about a place.

So why the confusion on the size of this continent? The two maps below help to illustrate. The first map is the one that the majority of westerners are probably most familiar with, called a Mercantor projection. Unfortunately it's a map that stretches out the poles making northern regions, like North America and Europe look much bigger than they actually are. A more accurate map, like the one below from National Geographic, helps give a slightly better representation of sizes.

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Note the differences in the size of Greenland. In the Mercantor map it's huge, essentially as big as Africa. But in the more accurate map, Greenland is much smaller relative to the continent. 

There are some other cool maps that all give different effects to mess with your thinking.

I have this upside-down one on the wall in my house.

And this one by Buckminster Fuller is pretty cool too.

The UN uses this map, which is slightly more egalitarian - nobody on top, and it does away with the East/West divisions.

There was one map that I couldn't find online but also like. It's the world map that the Soviets used during the Cold War. This map places the USSR at the centre (of course), and depicts the United States as kind of hanging out across the arctic circle (rather than the usual East/West picture that many westerners are accustomed to). The map is interesting because it accentuates the perceived Communist enemies of the US and China. Both countries, when seen from this map, appear menacing and poised to attack from the top and bottom. If anyone else can find it please post below.

Here's one that tries to illustrate the Soviet perspective, but it's American made so, shouldn't be taken as totally accurate.

Finally, here's some other cool perspective maps from Life Magazine. I can't embed them here because they're in Googlebooks, but take a look, they're very interesting. Click here.