Is Tanzania a big country? this is a frequently asked question among globe trotters. So, exactly big is Tanzania?
Measuring a total of 945,203 square kilometers or around 364,945 square miles, Tanzania occupies 3.1 percent of the African Continent.
The country is not even in the top-ten largest countries on the continent. Actually it ranks at number 12 behind Mauritania at 11 and Ethiopia at number 10.
Located in East Africa, Tanzania ranks at number 30 among the world’s largest countries. There are 195 countries in the world today.
Tanzania used to be the largest country within the East African Community region before the Democratic Republic of Congo joined the EAC in 2022.
In fact, the size of Tanzania is equivalent to the total area occupied by Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi.
But now, DR Congo which is the second largest country in Africa, after Algeria currently tops the bill in East Africa by its sheer size which is mapped within 2,344,858 square kilometres or 905,355 square miles.
And how big is East Africa? The East African Community, made up of seven member states, namely Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania, Burundi, South-Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo covers 4.8 million square kilometers, translating into 1.9 million square miles in total.
DR Congo occupies almost 50 percent of the total land subjugated by the seven EAC member states. Kinshasa also accounts for 7.7 percent of the total area on the African continent.
Algeria is the largest country in Africa, boasting 2.4 Million square kilometers of land, which translates into 919,595 square miles of mostly desert landscape in the northern parts of the continent.
Sudan is the third largest country in Africa, measuring 1,861,484 square kilometers or 718,723 square miles and accounting for 6.2 percent of Africa’s total area.
So, which is the smallest country in Africa? This has to be Seychelles, measuring only 452 square kilometers and accounting for just 0.001 percent of the continent’s real estate. Despite its small size however, Seychelles is made up of 115 islands in the Indian Ocean.
So how big is Africa? The world’s second largest continent is a chunk of 30.3 million square kilometres or 11.7 million square miles.
Meanwhile which is the largest country in the world? Russia with 17.1 million square kilometres should be the biggest territory on the globe.
The autonomous Vatican City, on the other hand is the world’s smallest country measuring 0.49 square kilometres.