United Nations Backs New ‘Equal‑Area’ World Map – Africa Grows, Greenland Shrinks

Picture the world map you learned in primary school – the one where Greenland looks almost the same size as Africa. Now imagine flipping that picture so that Africa dominates the page and Greenland shrinks to a modest speck. That’s the vision behind a fresh United Nations resolution that just sailed through the General Assembly.

On 5 September 2026, 164 member states voted in favour of the “Correct the Map” resolution, with only the United States objecting and six nations staying neutral. Spearheaded by Togo on behalf of the African Group and bolstered by the African Union, the measure calls on governments, educators and media outlets to favour equal‑area map projections – most notably the “Equal Earth” design – over the centuries‑old Mercator projection for everyday representations.

Why does this matter? The Mercator projection, invented in 1569 by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator, was a brilliant tool for sailors because it preserves angles and direction. The trade‑off? Anything far from the equator gets blown up on the page. That’s why Greenland often looks as big as Africa, even though the African continent is roughly fourteen times larger in reality. North America, Europe and Russia also enjoy an unearned visual boost, while the true giants of the south – Africa and South America – are squeezed.

The Equal Earth projection, rolled out in 2018, takes a different approach. It sacrifices a bit of shape fidelity to keep the surface area of each landmass honest. On an Equal Earth map, Africa finally gets the space it deserves, and Greenland looks appropriately modest. The map isn’t perfect – no flat map can capture a sphere without compromises – but it prioritises the kind of information most people need when they’re learning geography, not plotting a sea route.

“Maps shape our understanding of the world,” said Togo’s foreign minister Robert Dussey, emphasizing that these visual tools feed our imagination, our education and even our collective self‑esteem. For many Africans, constantly seeing a shrunken continent feeds a subtle but real bias, one the AU says the new resolution aims to correct.

The United States, however, pushed back. Representative Yaryna Ferencevych argued that the UN should focus on “genuine problems” rather than revisiting 16th‑century map designs, hinting that the debate was being used to stir up discussions about reparations and “cognitive justice.” That was the lone dissenting vote.

Will the classic Mercator vanish overnight? Unlikely. It remains indispensable for navigation because it preserves straight‑line courses across the globe. What the UN is doing is merely encouraging a shift in contexts where a true sense of scale matters – textbooks, news graphics, online platforms and even corporate presentations.

In short, the resolution doesn’t outlaw Mercator; it just nudges the world toward a map that tells a fairer story. If schools start swapping out those old posters for Equal Earth visuals, future generations may finally see Africa for the continent it really is – vast, vibrant, and unmistakably larger than the tiny green island it’s been reduced to for too long.