How can I plot a continents map with R?

Question

There are many solutions to plot maps at country level, but in my case I want to print statistics at continent level.

The only thing that comes into my mind is to us

Answer 1

rworldmap has functions for plotting or aggregating data to regional levels including continents.

A simple start that should produce the plot below :

library(rworldmap)
#get coarse resolution world from rworldmap
sPDF <- getMap()  
#mapCountries using the 'continent' attribute  
mapCountryData(sPDF, nameColumnToPlot='continent')

Or for the 7 continents model :

mapCountryData(sPDF, nameColumnToPlot='REGION')

To aggregate your own data from country to regional level look at :

?mapByRegion