The short answer
EqualAtlas's mapped Africa footprint is about 1.31 times its mapped Europe footprint: approximately 29,820,053 km² versus 22,840,240 km². Common Mercator maps weaken that contrast because much of Europe lies farther from the equator and receives more projection enlargement.
What the overlay shows
The outlines above are centred on one another and drawn at the same equal-area scale. They are not moved to the same latitude on a Mercator map, resized by hand or compared by bounding-box width. The filled area itself carries the comparison.
Africa extends far north and south while retaining a broad equatorial centre. Europe's complete political-region footprint includes many northern countries and all of transcontinental Russia under the stated definition.
How the two regions are defined
Africa combines the complete Natural Earth geometries of 54 UN member states in the UN M49 Africa group plus Western Sahara. Europe uses the 44-country UN M49 Europe group with complete country geometries.
That means Europe includes all of Russia rather than clipping it at a conventional Europe–Asia line. The result is a reproducible political-region comparison, not a claim that continents have one universally agreed physical border.
What Mercator changes
Mercator preserves local angles, which is useful for navigation, but its scale increases with latitude. Europe consequently receives more screen area than equally large land nearer the equator. Africa crosses the equator, where Mercator scale is least enlarged.
This does not make Mercator mathematically wrong. It makes it unsuitable when the communication goal is to compare relative area without a visible warning.
What Equal Earth preserves—and what it does not
Equal Earth preserves relative area across the world, so the size relationship in a thematic or educational map remains proportional. It does not preserve every local angle, shape, direction or distance; no flat world map can preserve everything at once.
Explore the evidence
Sources and further reading
Continue with the Equal Earth projection guide, try the interactive map, or review our methodology.