UN to Vote on Africa True Size Map as Togo Challenges the World Map
- Tinka C. Muhwezi
- 1 day ago
- 5 min read
For generations, much of the world has learned geography from a map that makes Africa appear far smaller than it really is.
Now, Togo wants the United Nations to help change that.
The UN General Assembly is due to vote on a resolution calling for the traditional Mercator projection to be phased out in favour of a map that more accurately represents the relative size of continents. Togo is leading the initiative and has received backing from the African Union.
The proposal may sound like a technical argument among cartographers. It is not.
Behind the debate over lines, projections and geography is a much bigger question: how does the way Africa is represented influence how the world understands Africa?
Why the World Map Makes Africa Look Smaller
The Mercator projection was developed by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569 primarily as a navigational tool. Its great strength was helping sailors plot courses across the oceans.
Its weakness is geographical distortion.
Because the projection stretches landmasses as they move towards the poles, territories in northern and southern high latitudes appear much larger than their actual size.
Africa, much of which lies closer to the equator, is consequently presented at a dramatically reduced visual scale.
The distortion is so significant that Greenland can appear comparable in size to Africa on a conventional world map.
In reality, Africa is about 14 times larger than Greenland.
That difference is difficult to appreciate when looking at the familiar Mercator map hanging in classrooms, appearing on websites or displayed on screens.
Africa True Size Map: What the UN Is Being Asked to Change
The Africa true size map campaign seeks to make that discrepancy harder to ignore.
Togo is promoting the Equal Earth projection, an equal-area map developed by cartographers in 2018. Unlike the Mercator projection, Equal Earth is designed to preserve the relative areas of continents and countries.
The proposal before the UN is not legally binding. But if adopted, it could encourage governments, schools, technology companies and other institutions to reconsider which world map they use.
That could eventually affect geography classrooms, educational materials and digital mapping platforms.
The significance would therefore extend well beyond the UN chamber.
The Mercator Projection and the Geography of Distortion
There is an important caveat to the debate: the Mercator projection was not created to deliberately make Africa look insignificant.
Its original purpose was navigation.
That historical context matters.
But the fact that a map was designed for one purpose does not mean its visual consequences are irrelevant centuries later. The Mercator projection became one of the most recognisable representations of the world, even though its distortions make comparisons between continents highly misleading.
The question Togo and its supporters are raising is therefore not simply whether Mercator is mathematically useful.
It is whether a map designed for sixteenth-century navigation should continue to function as the world's default mental picture of geographical size.
Why Greenland Looks Almost as Large as Africa
Few examples demonstrate the problem better than Greenland and Africa.
On a Mercator map, Greenland can appear enormous. Africa looks comparatively modest.
But Africa's actual landmass is vastly larger.
The same distortion affects other parts of the world. Countries and territories closer to the poles are visually enlarged, while many equatorial regions appear reduced.
This matters because maps are not just technical instruments. They are also educational tools.
A child repeatedly seeing one part of the world represented as enormous and another as relatively small is absorbing a visual hierarchy, even if the map never explicitly makes a political argument.
That is where the debate becomes much more interesting.
Is This Cartographic Colonialism?
Critics of the traditional projection have described its wider effect as “cartographic colonialism” — the idea that geographical representation can reinforce historical power relationships.
The argument is not that Mercator created colonialism.
Colonialism obviously predates the modern widespread use of the projection.
The argument is subtler: visual representations can reinforce assumptions about which regions appear central, powerful or important.
Africa has often had to fight against external perceptions that underestimate its scale, resources, population and economic potential. A map that visually shrinks the continent can become another layer in that problem.
Supporters of the new projection therefore see correcting the map as part of correcting the narrative.
Why Africa's Map Has Become a Geopolitical Issue
The timing is significant.
Africa's population is growing rapidly, its cities are expanding, and its economies are becoming increasingly important to global markets. The continent also sits at the centre of competition over critical minerals, energy, food production, technology and emerging markets.
Its geographical scale is fundamental to understanding those realities.
Africa is larger than China, India, the United States, Japan and several European countries combined. Yet many people encounter the continent primarily through maps that visually compress its size.
That disconnect has consequences for public understanding.
A more accurate map cannot solve Africa's economic or political challenges. But it can remove one small source of geographical misunderstanding.
Togo and the African Union Take the Map Debate to the UN
Togo's campaign has developed into a broader African initiative.
The African Union endorsed the #CorrectTheMap campaign in 2025 and subsequently asked Togo to spearhead efforts to bring the issue before the United Nations.
The campaign also comes after another African-backed initiative succeeded at the General Assembly. In March, a Ghana-sponsored resolution describing the transatlantic slave trade as the “gravest crime against humanity” and calling for reparatory justice passed with 123 votes in favour.
That success has given supporters of the map resolution reason to believe that the proposal could attract significant international support.
For Togo, the issue is ultimately about Africans taking greater responsibility for how the continent is represented.
Could the New Map Change Classrooms, Technology and Global Perceptions?
A UN resolution would not instantly replace every Mercator map in the world.
But it could create momentum.
Schools could reconsider geography materials. Publishers could adopt alternative projections. Technology companies could face growing pressure to use more geographically representative designs. Governments and international organisations could also rethink the maps used in official communication.
The most visible change could eventually come from digital platforms.
Most people today encounter maps through phones and computers rather than classroom walls. If major technology companies adopted an equal-area projection for certain educational or general-purpose applications, the shift could reach billions of people.
The map people see every day helps shape the mental map they carry in their heads.
Africa Is Challenging More Than a Map
The coming UN vote is therefore about more than replacing one cartographic projection with another.
It raises a fundamental question about representation.
For centuries, Africa has frequently been described and represented through frameworks developed outside the continent. Togo's initiative challenges that tradition by arguing that Africans should have greater influence over how Africa is presented to the world.
The Africa true size map debate will not change Africa's physical geography.
Africa does not need a new map to become larger.
It was always this large.
What may be changing is the world's willingness to see it.
Comments