Egypt vs South Africa

South Africa is 1.2 times larger than Egypt — 1,219,090 against 1,001,450 km². Egypt is 1.8 times more populous than South Africa — 118,365,995 against 64,747,319 people.

Side by side

Population density

Egypt is 2.2 times more densely populated than South Africa — 118 against 53 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 — Egypt on the right, South Africa on the left.
• Different currencies: the Egyptian pound and the South African rand.

Egypt

Almost the entire population lives on the Nile valley and delta, which is only a few percent of the country's land area; the rest is desert. The Nile runs about 6,650 km from its headwaters to the Mediterranean. The Suez Canal, 193 km long, has no locks because the Mediterranean and Red Sea are close to the same level.

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.