UN Vote Could End Mercator Map Era as Africa Pushes for Equal-Area Maps

The initiative has been led by Togo and backed by the 55-member African Union, according to the Guardian. The proposed resolution calls on international organisations, schools and technology companies to adopt map projections that represent countries and continents closer to their actual size.

Togo’s Foreign Minister Robert Dussey said the initiative aims to correct the way Africa is represented on world maps.

“We are asking the member states to move from the Mercator map to the Equal Earth map... Africa is not asking for a privilege. We are not asking for compassion. We just want to have the real size that we have in the world in terms of geography,” Dussey said in a briefing to the African Group at the UN this week.

The Mercator projection was created in 1569 by Flemish geographer Gerardus Mercator. It was designed mainly for navigation because it allows sailors to plot routes using straight lines.

However, the projection distorts the relative size of landmasses as they move away from the Equator. Areas closer to the poles appear much larger than they actually are, while regions around the Equator appear comparatively smaller.

Greenland is one of the most prominent examples. On a standard Mercator map, Greenland can appear close in size to Africa. In reality, Africa covers about 30.3 million square kilometres, while Greenland is around 2.16 million square kilometres. Africa is therefore roughly 14 times larger.

Africa’s size is also often underestimated when viewed on conventional world maps. The continent is large enough to contain the land areas of the United States, China, India, Japan, Mexico and much of Europe combined.

The distortion has long drawn criticism from geographers and others who argue that the visual representation of the world can influence perceptions of different regions. Some critics have described the continued dominance of the Mercator projection as a form of “cartographic colonialism”, arguing that it visually diminishes countries in the Global South.

The proposed UN resolution would therefore seek broader use of equal-area projections, including the Equal Earth map, in an effort to present the geographical size of countries and continents in closer proportion to reality.