Brazil vs South Africa

Brazil is 7.0 times larger than South Africa — 8,515,770 against 1,219,090 km². Brazil is 3.3 times more populous than South Africa — 212,812,405 against 64,747,319 people.

Side by side

Population density

South Africa is 2.1 times more densely populated than Brazil — 53 against 25 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 — Brazil on the right, South Africa on the left.
• Different currencies: the Brazilian real and the South African rand.
• Brazil spans 4 time zones, so "local time" there is not a single answer.
• Different continents — South America and Africa.

Brazil

The fifth-largest country in the world and the largest in the southern hemisphere. It holds about sixty percent of the Amazon rainforest, and the Amazon River discharges roughly a fifth of all the fresh water that reaches the world's oceans — more than the next seven rivers combined. Brazil borders every South American country except Chile and Ecuador.

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.