The world may soon be looking at a different map. The United Nations General Assembly has endorsed a resolution led by several African countries calling for the adoption of a projection that enlarges the continent’s apparent size while reducing the visual dominance of North America and Europe — an effort to present global geography more accurately.
The measure won the support of 164 countries. The United States opposed it, while six other nations abstained.
Known as the Equal Earth cartographic projection, the proposed map “offers a more accurate representation of the sizes of continental landmasses and to this end is a relevant option for improving the accuracy of the cartographic representation of the world,” the resolution says.
It calls on member states to replace the traditional Mercator projection, created in 1569 by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator for maritime navigation.
The commonly used Mercator projection makes North America, Greenland, and Northern Europe/Russia appear vastly larger than the reality
“They guide education, nourish the imagination, and influence collective perceptions,” Mr Dussey said at the UN.
“They are therefore never neutral, when they present a distorted image of our planet, they risk perpetuating inaccurate representations that are passed down through generations.”
‘Distorted representation’
The Mercator projection was designed to preserve the shapes and angles of land masses, but it sacrificed accuracy in portraying their relative size — a consequence, in part, of converting a three-dimensional globe into a flat, two-dimensional map.
As a result, regions in the north appear expanded while areas near the equator are compressed. Europe and North America look far larger than they are, while Africa and South America appear diminished.
The Equal Earth projection was introduced by a group of cartographers in 2018.
Under the projection, Africa, Latin America, South Asia and Oceania appear vastly larger.
“Equal Earth preserves the relative surface areas of continents and, as much as possible, shows their shapes as they appear on a globe,” one of its creators, Bojan Savric, told AFP in 2025.
France’s foreign ministry, which co-sponsored the resolution backing the new projection, said it would stop using the Mercator map.
On the traditional projection, “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,” Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said.
“Changing maps obviously doesn’t change the world,” he acknowledged. “But correcting a distorted representation is already an act of truth.”
The campaign comes as France works to strengthen ties with Africa, especially with former colonies where relations remain shaped by a complicated history.
