Image alt text: Side-by-side comparison of the Mercator map projection and the Equal Earth projection showing Africa’s true size relative to Greenland and Europe
On most world maps hanging in classrooms, conference rooms, and government offices around the world, Greenland and Africa look roughly the same size. The reality is that they are not. Greenland covers about 2.2 million square kilometers while Africa covers 30.4 million. The map has been wrong by a factor of 14 since 1569, and on September 5, 2026, 164 countries voted to replace it.
The resolution, called “Correct the Map,” was sponsored by Togo with backing from the African Union’s 54 member states and passed in the UN General Assembly with support from France, the United Kingdom, and most of the world. One country voted against it (the United States). Another six nations abstained.
Why the Mercator map distorts
The Mercator map was designed in 1569 by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator to help European explorers navigate across the globe. Its distortion is a mathematical consequence: it is impossible to represent the surface of a sphere accurately on a flat page without making compromises somewhere. The Mercator projection accommodates Earth’s curvature by making countries near the equator appear smaller than they are and countries near the poles appear larger.
The result is a map where Greenland looks as large as Africa, Russia appears to stretch endlessly across the top of the world, and Europe sits comfortably at the center. None of those impressions are accurate.
The campaign group #CorrectTheMap has put the scale of the error plainly: you could fit the United States, China, India, Japan, Mexico, and much of Europe inside Africa and still have land to spare.
The Equal Earth projection
In 2018, a team of cartographers developed the Equal Earth projection as an alternative. The projection maintains the relative sizes of all landmasses with far greater accuracy, showing Africa in something close to its true proportions. In February 2026, the African Union’s 54 member states formally adopted it, describing it as a more accurate representation of all continents, particularly Africa.
The UN resolution is non-binding, meaning no country is legally required to change its maps. But the expectation is that institutions around the world, from international bodies to national education systems, will begin using the Equal Earth projection in place of the Mercator.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot announced that France’s ministry would stop using the Mercator map. Togolese Foreign Minister Robert Dussey, one of the resolution’s architects, described the stakes in a single sentence: “A fair world begins with a fair map.”
Barrot’s framing was more philosophical. “Changing the map obviously doesn’t change the world,” he said. “But correcting a representation that distorts it is already an act of truth.”
The US objection
US representative Yaryna Ferencevych said the resolution mocked the work and purpose of the General Assembly. “Instead of focusing on genuine problems of international peace, prosperity, or good relations, this body is debating map projects from the 16th Century, and their role in promoting reparations and ‘cognitive justice,'” she said.
The US was also the dissenting voice in March when the UN adopted a resolution declaring the transatlantic slave trade “the gravest crime against humanity.”
More than a cartographic error
For advocates of the change, the problem runs deeper than geographic inaccuracy. “Africa’s misrepresentation on world maps is not just a cartographic error. It is a narrative issue,” said Lerato Mogoatlhe of Africa No Filter, one of the groups behind the campaign. She described it as part of the world’s longest-running misinformation about the continent.
Kenyan geographer Kioko Muendo has made a similar argument: the Mercator map has implicitly downplayed Africa’s resources, population, and investment potential for generations. A continent that appears small on a map tends to be imagined as peripheral. The Equal Earth projection makes it difficult to sustain that impression.
The projection went from creation to UN resolution in eight years. Whether the institutions that educate students, brief diplomats, and frame international policy follow through quickly or slowly will determine how much practical difference the vote ultimately makes.
