Africa is set to gain a more accurate visual representation on the world map after the United Nations General Assembly backed a new cartographic projection aimed at correcting longstanding distortions in the way the world’s continents are portrayed.
The resolution, spearheaded by African countries, was supported by 164 countries, while the United States voted against it and six countries abstained. The resolution supports the Equal Earth projection as a relevant option for improving the accuracy of global maps.
The move encourages member states to consider adopting the Equal Earth projection instead of the traditional Mercator projection, which was developed by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569 primarily for maritime navigation.
For centuries, the Mercator projection has been widely used in classrooms, atlases and digital maps. While it preserves the shapes and angles needed for navigation, it significantly distorts the relative size of land masses, making regions in the northern hemisphere appear much larger than they are in reality.
As a result, Europe and North America appear visually dominant, while Africa, South America and other regions closer to the equator appear considerably smaller than their actual land areas.
Supporters of the UN-backed initiative argue that the issue goes beyond cartography because maps influence how people understand the world from childhood and can shape education, imagination and collective perceptions.
Togo’s Foreign Minister, Robert Dussey, said maps are not simply neutral representations of geography, arguing that distorted images can contribute to inaccurate perceptions of countries and continents.
The Equal Earth projection, developed and introduced by cartographers in 2018, was designed to preserve the relative surface areas of continents while maintaining a visually balanced representation of the world.
Under the projection, Africa, Latin America, South Asia and Oceania appear significantly larger than they do on Mercator maps, giving viewers a closer impression of their actual geographical scale.
Cartographer Bojan Šavrič, one of the developers of Equal Earth, explained that the projection preserves relative surface areas while maintaining shapes that resemble how the continents appear on a globe.
However, the United States opposed the resolution. Its representative, Yaryna Ferencevych, criticised the initiative, arguing that the United Nations should focus on more pressing global challenges instead of debating mapping practices dating back to the 16th century and issues surrounding reparations and what she described as cognitive justice.
France co-sponsored the initiative and announced that it would move away from the Mercator projection in favour of a more accurate representation of the world’s land masses.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot argued that existing maps give disproportionate visual prominence to the United States, Russia and China while making Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia appear smaller. He also pointed to the familiar example of Greenland appearing almost as large as Africa on Mercator maps despite being vastly smaller in actual land area.
“Changing maps obviously doesn’t change the world. But correcting a distorted representation is already an act of truth,” Barrot said.
Supporters of the initiative maintain that adopting a more accurate world map could contribute to a better understanding of global geography and challenge centuries-old visual conventions that have influenced how different parts of the world are perceived.
The debate also comes as France seeks to strengthen its relations with African countries, particularly former colonies, making the issue of representation part of a broader conversation about Africa’s place in the global system.
