The Map That Made Africa Look Smaller

For generations, the world has been taught through a picture that quietly changes the proportions of the planet. On the familiar rectangular world map hanging in classrooms, printed in textbooks and appearing across websites, Greenland can look almost as large as Africa, while Europe and North America occupy a visual space that seems far more comparable to Africa than their actual land areas would suggest. The map is so familiar that its distortions rarely attract attention. This week, however, the United Nations General Assembly put that picture at the centre of an international debate, backing an Africa-led campaign to promote maps that represent the relative size of the world's continents more accurately.

On September 4, the General Assembly adopted the resolution “Correct the Map: Rebalancing Global Cartographic Representation and Promoting Equitable Representation of the World's Regions, Particularly Africa” by 164 votes to one, with six abstentions. The initiative was led by Togo on behalf of the African states and supported by the African Union. It encourages governments, schools, international organisations and technology companies to use the Equal Earth projection or other equal-area projections when the purpose is to communicate the relative size of continents. It is important, however, not to overstate what happened: the resolution is not legally binding, does not ban the Mercator projection and does not impose Equal Earth as the world's only map. It also explicitly recognises that different projections serve different purposes, including navigation.

The significance of the vote lies in the uncomfortable question behind it: what happens when the image people use to understand the world does not accurately represent the size of the world? The answer begins with the Mercator projection, the 16th-century map created by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator. Mercator's map was not designed to deceive anyone or to make Europe look more important. It was created primarily for navigation, because it preserves directions in a way that was extremely useful to sailors. The problem is that the same mathematical property that makes Mercator valuable for navigation also produces increasingly severe distortions of area as land moves farther from the Equator. Countries and continents toward the poles appear much larger than they actually are, while regions closer to the Equator appear comparatively smaller.

The difference becomes startling when Africa and Greenland are placed side by side. Greenland covers roughly 2.2 million square kilometres. Africa covers more than 30 million square kilometres. In reality, Africa is about 14 times larger than Greenland, yet on a standard Mercator world map the two can appear surprisingly similar in size. The same projection also exaggerates the apparent size of countries such as Canada and Russia because of their northern latitude. This does not make the Mercator projection mathematically “wrong”; rather, it means that a projection designed to preserve direction is being interpreted as though it also preserves area. The Equal Earth projection takes a different approach. Developed by cartographers Bojan Šavrič, Tom Patterson and Bernhard Jenny and introduced in 2018, it is an equal-area projection, meaning that the relative areas of land masses are preserved even though their shapes and other properties still experience some distortion.

The distinction matters because there is no such thing as a completely distortion-free flat map of a spherical Earth. Every projection has to make compromises. A map can preserve area, shape, distance or direction, but it cannot preserve all of them perfectly at once. Equal Earth therefore is not a magical “true map” that eliminates every problem. What it does is prioritise one particular form of accuracy: relative area. Its creators describe it as a visually familiar alternative to other equal-area projections, with continental shapes that remain recognisable while keeping their proportions correct.

What makes the UN debate more consequential is that maps do not stay on paper. They become part of people's mental picture of the world. A major worldwide study published in the International Journal of Geo-Information “The Influence of Map Projections on People’s Global-Scale Cognitive Map: A Worldwide” Study examined this question with more than 130,000 participants from around the world, with 97,082 usable responses ultimately included in the analysis. Participants were asked to estimate the relative sizes of countries, regions and continents, allowing researchers to examine whether familiarity with different map projections was associated with people's understanding of geographical size. The study found evidence that map projections influence the accuracy of people's global-scale mental maps, although the relationship is more complicated than simply saying that everyone “believes in the Mercator map.” The researchers concluded that the projections people regularly encounter can affect their understanding of relative geographic size.

That research gives scientific weight to the argument being made by African campaigners. If a map is repeatedly used in classrooms, news reports, atlases and digital media, its visual proportions can become part of the way people intuitively understand the world. A student does not necessarily stop to think about the mathematical compromises behind a projection when looking at a map on a classroom wall. The image is simply absorbed as a picture of reality. That is why the African campaign argues that correcting the visual representation of Africa is not merely an issue for cartographers. It is also an issue of education and public understanding.

Togo's Foreign Minister Robert Dussey has made that argument directly. Addressing the General Assembly during the debate, he described the issue as one of “cognitive justice,” linking accurate geographical knowledge with dignity, historical memory and the way societies understand different regions of the world. He told delegates that maps “shape our understanding of the world” and influence collective perceptions. After the resolution passed, he described it as a historic moment and argued that “Correcting the map means correcting the way we see the world.”

Those words reveal why this debate has become much larger than a technical argument about cartographic formulas. For African governments and organisations behind the Correct the Map campaign, the familiar world map is part of a much longer history of how Africa has been represented. The campaign is supported by the African Union and organisations including Africa No Filter and Speak Up Africa, and its supporters argue that Africa has repeatedly been presented through external narratives that minimise its scale, diversity and importance. The Mercator projection itself was not created as colonial propaganda, and it would be historically inaccurate to claim that Mercator deliberately made Africa small. But its continued dominance has become part of a broader conversation about whether inherited systems of representation still influence how people understand Africa today.

That is also where the argument needs some caution. Changing a map will not change Africa's economic reality. It will not create jobs, build roads, end conflicts, improve agricultural productivity or solve the continent's political and development challenges. Nor does a larger-looking Africa automatically mean a more powerful Africa. The physical size of a continent and its economic or political influence are very different things. What a more accurate map can do is challenge a basic visual misconception: the idea that Africa occupies a relatively small portion of the world simply because it has traditionally been displayed that way.

The scale is difficult to appreciate until it is visualised correctly. Africa's more than 30 million square kilometres make it the world's second-largest continent by area. The African Union represents 55 member states, while the continent contains an extraordinary range of climates, languages, cultures, economies and ecosystems. The familiar Mercator image can make that physical scale surprisingly difficult to grasp. Equal-area maps make the comparison much clearer because Africa's size is shown in proper proportion to the rest of the world's land masses.

There is also a deeper question about who gets to decide what the world should look like. The United States became the only country to vote against the UN resolution, while 164 countries supported it. The American representative, Yaryna Ferencevych, criticised the initiative as part of a broader “radical ideological project” and argued that the General Assembly should be concentrating on what Washington considers more immediate global problems. She described resolutions of this kind as “barnacles” contributing to the institution's loss of credibility.

The US objection is significant because it exposes the political disagreement beneath what might otherwise appear to be a simple scientific question. From one perspective, the initiative is an uncomplicated effort to improve geographic accuracy in education and public communication. If equal-area projections provide a better picture of the relative size of continents, supporters ask, why should schools and institutions continue relying so heavily on a projection that substantially distorts area? From another perspective, however, critics question whether the United Nations should endorse one particular way of representing the world and whether a technical issue has been turned into an ideological campaign.

There was even concern from Ukraine, which voted against the resolution after raising a different issue. Ukraine said it supported the principle of scientifically accurate cartography but warned that the resolution should not create ambiguity concerning sovereignty, territorial integrity or disputed territories. That concern was addressed in explanations from several supporters, who stressed that the resolution concerns the relative size of continental land masses, not political borders or territorial claims. The European Union likewise supported the initiative while emphasising that nothing in the resolution changes internationally recognised boundaries.

Those qualifications are important because a map is capable of communicating much more than physical size. Political maps show borders, disputed territories, capitals and names, all of which can carry legal and diplomatic consequences. The UN debate therefore made clear that “correcting the map” does not mean rewriting political borders or deciding who owns disputed territory. The resolution specifically keeps those issues separate from the question of geographic projection.

The other misconception worth correcting is that the Mercator projection is now disappearing everywhere. It is not. The UN resolution does not prohibit its use, and there are situations where Mercator remains useful. Navigation is the clearest example. A projection should be judged according to what someone is trying to accomplish. A sailor plotting a course and a teacher comparing the physical size of Africa and Europe do not necessarily need the same map. The UN resolution itself recognises this point by encouraging critical education about map projections, their characteristics, limitations and appropriate uses.

That may ultimately be the most sensible outcome of the debate. Instead of teaching students that one map is simply “correct” and another is “wrong,” geography education can teach them that every flat map is a representation with particular strengths and weaknesses. A Mercator map can be useful for navigation. Equal Earth can be useful for comparing continental areas. Other projections can be useful for different purposes. Understanding those differences may be more valuable than simply replacing one map with another.

For Africa, however, the symbolism of the change still matters. The continent has spent decades pushing back against representations that reduce it to conflict, poverty, famine and crisis while overlooking its cities, markets, cultural industries, scientific institutions, businesses and rapidly changing populations. The map debate belongs to that larger struggle over representation. It asks whether the images through which people encounter Africa should reflect the continent as it actually exists rather than allowing historical habits to determine what the world sees.

The strongest argument for the UN initiative, then, is not that Africa needs a bigger picture to feel important. Africa does not need cartographic inflation. It needs cartographic accuracy. The continent was already the size it was before Mercator drew his map, and it will remain that size regardless of which projection hangs in a classroom. What has changed is the willingness to question a picture that has become so familiar that its distortions are almost invisible.

That is why the UN vote matters. It does not abolish Mercator, and it does not establish a single mandatory replacement. Instead, it puts an old assumption under scrutiny and asks institutions to be more deliberate about the maps they use. In doing so, it turns a technical question about cartography into a wider conversation about education, perception, history and power.

For more than four centuries, the world has been repeatedly flattened onto paper and screens. The next generation may grow up seeing it differently. And perhaps that is what Togo's Foreign Minister meant when he told the General Assembly that “knowledge should elevate and not reduce.”

The point is not that changing the map will change Africa. The point is that, for once, the picture can begin by showing Africa as it actually is.