The Many Africas

In his memoir, The Lion Awakes, Ashish Thakkar describes how, as a young entrepreneur selling computer parts across Africa in the 1990s, he noticed that flights within the continent seemed to take longer than the distances on a map would suggest. “Were the planes slower?” he wondered. In fact, he learned, the commonly used Mercator projection vastly understates the size of Africa, and its 54 countries, relative to other continents. You wouldn’t know it from most maps, but the continent is large enough to fit China, India, Mexico, the United States, and western Europe within its borders - with room to spare.

"The Many Africas" is from the July/August 2016 issue of Foreign Affairs.

©2016 Foreign Affairs (P)2016 Audible, Inc.