The United Nations General Assembly has adopted a resolution calling for more accurate representations of the world’s landmasses on maps, putting renewed focus on Africa and the distortions created by the widely used Mercator projection.
The resolution, titled “Correct the Map: Rebalancing global cartographic representation and promoting equitable representation of the world’s regions, particularly Africa,” was adopted on Friday, September 4, by 164 votes to one, with six abstentions.
The United States was the only country to vote against it, while Estonia, Georgia, Lithuania, Moldova, Serbia and Ukraine abstained.
The initiative was introduced by Togo on behalf of the African Group and supported by the African Union.
It encourages governments, international organisations and other institutions to consider the Equal Earth projection and other equal-area projections when the relative size of landmasses is important.
The resolution is non-binding. It does not abolish the Mercator projection or require countries to replace existing maps with Equal Earth.
That distinction is important because Mercator was designed for a different purpose.
Developed by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569, the projection became particularly useful for navigation because it preserves local angles and makes constant compass bearings appear as straight lines.
Its major weakness is area distortion.
The farther a landmass lies from the Equator, the more its apparent size is exaggerated. This can make Greenland appear comparable in size to Africa on conventional world maps, even though Africa is approximately 14 times larger than Greenland in reality.
The Equal Earth projection was developed in 2018 by cartographers Bojan Šavrič, Tom Patterson and Bernhard Jenny to provide an equal-area alternative that maintains more familiar continental shapes.
On an Equal Earth map, Africa appears substantially larger relative to Europe, North America and Greenland than it does on a traditional Mercator map.
Africa’s true size
Africa covers about 30.3 million square kilometres, making it the world’s second-largest continent after Asia.
It is larger than North America, South America, Antarctica, Europe and Australia.
Africa is roughly three times the size of Europe and substantially larger than North America. It is also nearly twice the size of South America and more than twice the area of Antarctica.
One of the most striking comparisons involves Greenland. Although Greenland can look almost as large as Africa on a conventional Mercator map, its actual area is only about one-fourteenth that of Africa.
The difference is not because the land itself has changed. It is the result of the mathematical method used to transfer the curved surface of the Earth onto a flat map.
The debate has consequences beyond classroom geography.
Supporters of the UN initiative argue that maps can influence how people perceive the relative importance and scale of different parts of the world. The resolution itself points to potential cognitive, educational, cultural, geopolitical and socioeconomic consequences arising from historical distortions in cartographic representation.
For African countries, the initiative has therefore become part of a wider conversation about how the continent is represented internationally.
Still, Friday’s vote does not mean the world now has a single mandatory map.
There is no completely distortion-free flat map of the Earth. Different projections preserve different characteristics, including area, shape, distance or direction.
Mercator remains useful for navigation, while Equal Earth is designed primarily for showing the relative size of landmasses accurately.
The practical impact of the UN resolution will therefore depend on whether governments, schools, publishers, media organisations and technology companies voluntarily adopt equal-area projections for maps where size comparison matters.
For Africa, the message is straightforward: the continent was never as small as many familiar world maps made it appear.
