Both maps below show Kenya highlighted. At 1° Mercator inflates Kenya by only about 0.01%, so the two maps largely agree on it. Watch what the old map does to Malawi beside it. That contrast is why the new world map matters.
At 1°, Kenya sits in the band the old map drew almost honestly. It is one of the regions Mercator quietly under-represented, and that is exactly what the new Equal Earth map restores.
Kenya: key figures
| True area | On the old Mercator map | Distortion vs truth |
|---|
| Kenya | 580,367 km² | 580,425 km² | 1.00× |
| Greenland | 2,166,086 km² | 25,576,494 km² | 11.8× |
| Africa | 30,370,000 km² | n/a | n/a |
Old maps drew Kenya at about 580,425 km². The truth is 580,367 km², a difference of 0.01% that school atlases carried for centuries.