UN General Assembly Set to Consider African-Led Initiative for a More Accurate World Map

The UN General Assembly is poised to vote on Friday on a resolution that would endorse a world map offering a more accurate portrayal of Africa’s size.

The resolution backs the Equal Earth projection, which its supporters argue displays countries at their true scale, in preference to the widely used Mercator projection that compresses equatorial regions.

Proponents across Africa contend that the Mercator projection has reinforced a historical bias, diminishing the apparent size of tropical and equatorial areas while inflating that of high‑latitude nations.

Adoption of the resolution would not ban the Mercator projection nor mandate the Equal Earth map; rather, it seeks to heighten awareness of how cartographic choices shape global perceptions.

An overview of the key points in the debate follows.

Understanding the Mercator Projection

The Mercator projection, one of several methods for flattening the globe onto a plane, was devised in 1569 by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator to aid maritime navigation.

It achieves this by projecting Earth’s surface onto a cylinder and then unrolling that cylinder into a rectangular map.

For sailors, the map proved indispensable because a straight line on it corresponds to a constant compass bearing, enabling straightforward route planning. Today, the Mercator projection appears frequently in textbooks, classrooms, and online platforms such as Google Maps.

Critiques of the Mercator Projection

All map projections involve trade‑offs—whether in shape, area, or distance—because a sphere cannot be laid flat without some distortion. The Mercator projection preserves direction accurately but misrepresents the relative size of landmasses.

A student viewing a Mercator map in class could easily conclude that Greenland rivals Africa in size, though Greenland is actually only about one‑fourteenth as large, or that Alaska surpasses Mexico, when in reality it is roughly 25 % smaller.

Critics contend that the Mercator projection subtly enlarges northern nations—many of which are among the wealthiest—while shrinking equatorial regions, where most developing countries lie. Some cartographers argue that this distortion perpetuates a Eurocentric, colonial perspective.

Introduced in 2018 by cartographers Bojan Savrić, Bernhard Jenny, and Tom Patterson, the Equal Earth projection forgoes constant compass lines to portray countries at their true relative sizes, featuring rounded borders that reflect the planet’s curvature rather than a strict rectangle.

Since April 2025, African advocacy groups have pushed to supplant the Mercator map. The African Union endorsed the initiative in August 2025, calling on its 55 member states to introduce the Equal Earth projection in educational settings and public outreach. Togo, a West African state, sponsored the UN resolution, with support from fellow African Union members.

“A map is never neutral,” remarked Robert Dussey, Togo’s foreign minister, on Thursday while advocating for the UN resolution. “It shapes perceptions, influences how we view the positioning of peoples and continents, and can—starting in early schooling—reinforce depictions that diverge from true geography.”

Potential Impact of the UN Resolution

The resolution slated for Friday’s UN General Assembly urges the more than 190 member states to refresh their educational resources and teach students about countries’ true sizes and the shortcomings of various map projections.

It additionally calls on leading digital mapping services to engage with governments and embrace more accurate cartographic depictions.

Although the resolution is non‑binding, the campaign to displace the Mercator projection has already yielded tangible advances.

Google, which had relied on a Mercator‑based map for over ten years, altered its approach in 2018 by rendering the Earth as a globe when users zoom out on the desktop version. The company noted on social media that “Greenland’s projection is no longer the size of Africa.”

Several school districts have started to replace Mercator maps; Boston Public Schools, for instance, adopted the Peters projection in 2017. The Peters projection displays countries in their proper relative proportions, though it stretches and compresses their shapes to achieve that goal.

This change formed part of the district’s broader initiative to “decolonize the curriculum,” explained Colin Rose, who was a district administrator at the time, in an interview with The Boston Globe.

Source link