Argentina vs South Africa

Argentina is 2.3 times larger than South Africa — 2,780,400 against 1,219,090 km². South Africa is 1.4 times more populous than Argentina — 64,747,319 against 45,851,378 people.

Side by side

Population density

South Africa is 3.2 times more densely populated than Argentina — 53 against 16 people per km². Density is where area and population interact, and it often reverses the impression the headline figures give — a large country with a small population can feel emptier than a small crowded one by an enormous margin.

Practical differences

• They drive on opposite sides — Argentina on the right, South Africa on the left.
• Different currencies: the Argentine peso and the South African rand.
• Different continents — South America and Africa.

Argentina

The eighth-largest country in the world and the largest Spanish-speaking one. Aconcagua at 6,961 m is the highest mountain outside Asia; the Laguna del Carbón, about 1,000 km away, is 105 m below sea level and the lowest point in the western hemisphere. Ushuaia in Tierra del Fuego is the southernmost city of any size on Earth.

South Africa

One of only a handful of countries with more than one capital, and the only one with three. The Vredefort Dome south-west of Johannesburg is the largest verified impact crater on Earth, about 300 km across and 2 billion years old. The Cape Floral Region packs roughly 9,000 plant species into a small corner of the country, most of them found nowhere else.

Neutral facts only. Nothing here addresses politics, government, economics or which country is preferable in any respect — population is the one figure that dates, and it carries its year.