UN Endorses World Map Showing Africa's True Size
AFRICA
Image: Weiyi Cai/infoupdate.org
The U.N. General Assembly voted Friday to endorse a new world map that shows Africa at its true size, a resolution sponsored by Togo and backed by the African Union after a campaign led by African governments and advocacy groups. The vote passed 164 to 1, with only the United States opposed and six countries — Serbia, Estonia, Georgia, Lithuania, Moldova, and Ukraine - abstaining.
The resolution encourages replacing the 16th-century Mercator projection with the 2018 Equal Earth projection, which shows continents in accurate proportion. Under Mercator, Africa and Greenland appear roughly the same size; in reality Africa is 14 times larger. "Maps shape our understanding of the world," Togo's Foreign Minister Robert Dussey told the Assembly before the vote. "They guide education, nourish the imagination, and influence collective perceptions."
The measure doesn't ban Mercator or mandate a replacement - it only encourages adoption of Equal Earth in schools, media, and institutions worldwide, a point campaign group Africa No Filter said was central to its push. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot called the shift an "act of truth" rather than a change to the world itself. Geographers have long argued the Mercator map, designed for European sea navigation, inflates polar regions like North America and Greenland while shrinking Africa and South America - and that outside its original navigational use, as Syracuse University's Mark Monmonier put it, "there is no point in using it."