Sharon Adurokiya, Reporting
THE United Nations General Assembly has adopted a new world map that makes the African continent appear significantly larger while shrinking North America and Europe, in a landmark vote that saw 164 countries back the resolution while the United States voted against.
The resolution, spearheaded by several African nations and co-sponsored by France, endorsed the Equal Earth cartographic projection as a replacement for the traditional Mercator map, which has been criticised for perpetuating a distorted image of the planet for nearly five centuries.
Togo’s Foreign Minister Robert Dussey, whose country sponsored the resolution, said maps “guide education, nourish the imagination, and influence collective perceptions.”
“They are therefore never neutral; when they present a distorted image of our planet, they risk perpetuating inaccurate representation that is passed down through generations,” Dussey told the assembly.
The Mercator projection, designed by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569 for maritime navigation, focused on accurate depictions of shapes and angles but sacrificed relative size accuracy. The method inflated northern regions while compressing equatorial ones, making Europe and North America appear much larger than their true proportions while shrinking Africa and South America.
Under the new Equal Earth projection, Africa, Latin America, South Asia and Oceania appear significantly larger and more accurately proportioned relative to their actual landmass.
The United States, however, slammed the resolution, with representative Yaryna Ferencevych dismissing the move ahead of the vote.
“Instead of focusing on genuine problems… this body is debating map projects from the 16th century and their role in promoting reparations and cognitive justice,” Ferencevych said. “Such moves are the reason this institution is losing its credibility.”
Six other nations abstained from the vote.
‘An Act of Truth’
France, which co-sponsored the resolution, announced it would abandon the Mercator projection entirely. Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot noted that under the old map, “the United States, Russia and China take on a disproportionate visual prominence compared to Africa, Latin America or southeast Asia,” while “Greenland appears almost as big as Africa.”
“Changing maps obviously doesn’t change the world,” Barrot said. “But correcting a distorted representation is already an act of truth.”
The initiative comes as France seeks to improve relations with Africa, particularly with former colonies where ties have been strained.
A group of cartographers first launched the Equal Earth projection in 2018, designing it to preserve the relative surface areas of continents while showing their shapes as accurately as possible.
“Equal Earth preserves the relative surface areas of continents and, as much as possible, shows their shapes as they appear on a globe,” cartographer Bojan Savric told AFP in 2025.
The resolution urges member states to adopt the new map in official UN documentation and educational materials, marking what proponents describe as a significant step toward correcting centuries of cartographic distortion that have shaped global p erceptions of power and geography.
