UN Votes to Correct World Maps That Have Made Africa Look Smaller for Centuries

The United Nations General Assembly has overwhelmingly backed a resolution calling for greater use of world maps that accurately represent the relative size of Africa and other continents, marking a significant victory for an African-led campaign to challenge distortions associated with the centuries-old Mercator projection.

The resolution, led by Togo with support from African Union member states, was adopted on September 4 with 164 countries voting in favour, one against and six abstaining.

The United States was the only country to vote against the resolution.

The decision does not immediately replace existing world maps or legally require governments, schools and technology companies to stop using the Mercator projection. Instead, it encourages the wider adoption of equal-area maps, including the Equal Earth projection, particularly where accurately comparing the geographical size of countries and continents is important.

Why Africa appears smaller on traditional maps

The Mercator projection was developed by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569 and became one of the world’s most recognisable ways of displaying the Earth on a flat surface.

The projection proved particularly useful for navigation because of the way it represents direction. However, it significantly distorts the size of territories as they move farther from the equator.

As a result, countries and territories in northern regions appear considerably larger in comparison with those closer to the equator.

Africa is one of the clearest examples.

The continent covers approximately 30 million square kilometres, making it around 14 times larger than Greenland. On many Mercator maps, however, Greenland appears far closer to Africa in size than it actually is.

The issue does not mean that the Mercator projection is mathematically incorrect. Every attempt to display the spherical Earth on a flat surface involves some form of distortion.

The debate concerns whether Mercator is appropriate for situations where the purpose of a map is to compare the actual areas of countries and continents.

Equal Earth offers a different picture

Supporters of the UN resolution have promoted the Equal Earth projection, developed in 2018, as an alternative.

Equal Earth is designed to preserve the relative areas of countries and continents. When Africa is displayed using the projection, its enormous geographical scale becomes much more apparent in comparison with Europe, Greenland and other northern territories.

The African-backed campaign argues that this provides viewers, particularly students, with a more realistic understanding of the physical proportions of the world.

Togo leads African campaign

Togo has played a leading role in bringing the issue before the United Nations as part of the wider Correct The Map campaign supported by African states.

Togolese Foreign Minister Robert Dussey has argued that the way Africa is represented on commonly used maps is not simply a technical cartographic issue.

Supporters of the campaign say maps can influence how people perceive the relative importance, scale and position of different regions of the world.

Togo is expected to begin incorporating more accurate map projections into educational materials and has encouraged other governments and institutions to consider similar measures.

What happens after the UN vote?

Despite the scale of support at the General Assembly, people should not expect traditional world maps to disappear immediately.

The resolution is not legally binding.

Individual governments will determine which maps are used in their education systems, while publishers and technology companies will make their own decisions about which projections are appropriate for their products.

The Mercator projection is also expected to remain in use where its characteristics are particularly valuable, including certain navigation applications.

The resolution is therefore aimed primarily at encouraging equal-area projections in contexts where accurately representing the relative size of countries and continents is the priority.

United States votes against resolution

The United States was the sole country to vote against the measure.

Washington argued that the General Assembly should focus its attention on more pressing international challenges and raised objections to aspects of the political framing surrounding the campaign.

Six countries abstained from the vote.

Ukraine also raised concerns about the depiction of Ukrainian territories occupied by Russia on some maps associated with the Equal Earth projection.

Those concerns did not prevent the resolution from receiving overwhelming support.

A significant moment for Africa

The UN vote does not change Africa’s borders or geographical size.

Instead, it challenges how that size has traditionally been presented to millions of people.

For generations, the Mercator projection has shaped the world’s familiar visual image of Africa despite substantially exaggerating the apparent size of territories at higher latitudes.

The General Assembly’s decision now gives international political support to an effort that African governments hope will eventually influence schools, publishers, international institutions and digital mapping platforms.

Whether that happens on a large scale will depend on how governments and organisations respond after the vote.

For Africa, however, the September 4 decision represents a significant diplomatic milestone in a campaign built around a straightforward argument: when a map is intended to show the relative geographical size of the world’s continents, Africa should be represented in its proper proportion.