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UN votes to adopt new world map that shows Africa’s true scale
Confirmed
In Short: The United Nations General Assembly has voted to replace the traditional Mercator projection map, which inaccurately depicts Africa's size, with a new map that more accurately reflects the continent's true scale.
The Mercator projection, a map widely used globally since the 16th century, has been criticized for inaccurately depicting the sizes of countries and continents, particularly showing Africa as similar in size to Greenland, which is 14 times larger. The UN General Assembly has voted to adopt a new map that more accurately reflects the size of Africa, though the vote is non-binding.
The change is part of a Togo-sponsored resolution aimed at phasing out the traditional Mercator map, which has been in common use for centuries but has been criticized for its distortions. The new map, the Equal Earth projection, more accurately reflects countries' relative sizes.
The UN vote, while non-binding, will see changes to the maps used by institutions around the world, signaling a shift towards a more accurate representation of the world's geography. This move is part of a broader effort to correct historical inaccuracies in global cartography.
The new map, known as the Equal Earth projection, is designed to accurately reflect the sizes of continents and countries, providing a more balanced view of the world. This change is expected to have significant implications for how the world is perceived and understood, particularly in terms of the relative importance of different regions.
What's confirmed
What's still developing
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- Togo, which spearheaded a campaign for the resolution on behalf of the African Union, said the resolution “recognises and affirms that disproportionate cartographic representations, particularly those resulting from the Mercator projection, have had lasting cognitive, educational, cultural, geopolitical and socioeconomic effects, contributing to a drastic reduction in the perceived size of Africa and other regions of the world in the global collective imagination”.
- JJ Enoch, a London-based senior associate at JS Held, a geopolitical risk advisory firm, said the Mercator projection visually diminished Africa’s true scale.
- The United Nations General Assembly has voted overwhelmingly in favour of adopting a new world map designed to accurately represent the relative sizes of the world's countries, following a push by African nations to address what they described as a centuries-old cartographic injustice.
- Moky Makura, executive director of the advocacy organisation Africa No Filter that’s involved in “Correct the World” map campaign, hailed the vote, saying “now the real work begins”.
- "Africa's misrepresentation on world maps is not just a cartographic error - it's a narrative issue," Lerato Mogoatlhe from Africa No Filter, one of the groups behind the campaign to ditch the Mercator map, told the BBC.
- It was part of efforts to stop the "world's longest misinformation and disinformation" about Africa, she said.
- The United Nations General Assembly has voted to back a resolution spearheaded by several African countries to adopt a map that makes their continent bigger while shrinking North America and Europe.
Sources
- ABC News & Headlines – Australian Broadcasting Corporation link
- ABC News - Breaking News, Latest News and Videos link
- Al Jazeera link
- BBC link
- Business Insider Africa link
- ENA English link
- Head Topics link
- NPR link
- NewsBytes link
- Premium Times Nigeria link
- The Guardian link
- The Straits Times link
- Tuko News link
- kenyainsights.com link
- newsroom.gy link
- upi.com link