05/09/2026
AFRICA WAS NEVER SMALL: UN VOTE REOPENS THE QUESTION OF HOW THE WORLD HAS BEEN DRAWN
For generations, millions of people have grown up looking at a world map in which Africa appears smaller than it really is.
That familiar image is now being challenged at the highest level of international diplomacy.
On 4 September, the United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to support wider use of map projections that represent the relative size of continents more accurately, backing an African-led campaign to move away from the traditional Mercator projection in contexts where land area matters. The resolution passed by 164 votes to one, with six abstentions. The United States was the only country to vote against it.
The campaign was championed by Togo on behalf of the African Group and supported by the African Union, which has argued that the way Africa is commonly depicted is not simply a technical curiosity but a distortion with consequences for how the continent is perceived.
At the centre of the debate is the Mercator projection, created by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569.
It was an ingenious solution to a very specific problem.
Sailors needed a map on which a constant compass bearing could be represented as a straight line. Mercator achieved that by preserving angles and direction, making the projection exceptionally useful for maritime navigation.
But that mathematical advantage came at a cost.
To flatten a spherical Earth onto a rectangular surface, the projection stretches land increasingly as it moves away from the equator. Countries and regions at higher latitudes therefore appear much larger than they really are.
The effect is dramatic.
On the Mercator map, Greenland can appear comparable in size to Africa. In reality, Africa is roughly 14 times larger.
Russia, Canada, northern Europe and Greenland are similarly exaggerated, while Africa, South America and other regions closer to the equator appear comparatively diminished.
The important historical distinction is that Mercator did not design his map to make Africa look small.
The original distortion was a mathematical compromise made for navigation.
The deeper question is why a specialist sailing map went on to become one of humanity’s dominant images of the world.
Over centuries, the Mercator projection escaped the charts of navigators and entered classrooms, atlases, government offices, newspapers and eventually digital screens. A tool designed to help sailors cross oceans became a visual shorthand for the planet itself.
And that matters because maps do more than describe geography.
They teach people how to imagine it.
When the countries of Europe and the northern hemisphere repeatedly appear larger than their true proportions, while Africa appears smaller, the distortion can quietly influence perceptions of scale, importance and power.
The African Union has made that argument explicitly. In formally backing the campaign earlier this year, it said the Mercator projection had an involuntary “shrinking” effect on Africa and argued that distorted representation could influence perceptions of the continent’s economic viability, infrastructure, resources and geopolitical significance.
That does not mean the map itself caused colonialism or global inequality.
Nor does it mean every use of Mercator is inappropriate.
For navigation, its properties remain valuable, and Friday’s UN resolution does not ban the projection.
What the vote challenges is something more subtle: the assumption that a map built for one purpose should remain the default representation of the world in entirely different settings.
The alternative promoted by the resolution is the Equal Earth projection, developed in 2018. Unlike Mercator, it preserves the relative area of land masses, meaning Africa appears much closer to its true scale compared with Europe, North America and other continents.
The resolution is non-binding, but its ambitions extend well beyond the United Nations.
Governments, schools, publishers, international institutions and digital technology companies are being encouraged to adopt equal-area projections where accurate comparison of geographical size is important. Togo has said it intends to update its own school geography materials and push for wider adoption internationally.
For African advocates, the argument is ultimately about accuracy before symbolism.
Africa does not need to be enlarged.
It needs to stop being visually reduced.
The continent covers more than 30 million square kilometres, contains 54 internationally recognised states, and is the second-largest continent on Earth by both land area and population. Yet generations have been taught to visualise it through a projection that dramatically compresses its scale relative to the northern hemisphere.
That is why the UN vote carries significance beyond cartography.
It asks whether inherited conventions should survive simply because they are familiar, even when better tools now exist.
And it raises a larger question about representation itself: how many assumptions about Africa have become normal not because they are accurate, but because they have been repeated for long enough to feel true?
A map cannot change Africa’s actual size.
But changing the map may finally allow the world to see that size more clearly.
Africa was never small. The map was.
PaZvish News | Africa in Focus
