Africa (Commonwe alth Union) _ The African Union (AU) has jumped on the bandwagon of growing calls for governments and institutions to employ a more accurate world map, hopping into the Correct the Map campaign that seeks to replace the centuries-old Mercator projection. The campaign, advertised by activism groups Africa No Filter and Speak Up Africa, argues that the Mercator map, which was created in the 16th century for navigation, has cemented negative misconceptions about the size and importance of Africa on the world map.
The Mercator projection was developed to help navigators chart continuous true direction, allowing a straight line on the map to equal a compass course. While helpful for navigation, it severely exaggerates landmasses near the poles, expanding places like Europe and Greenland but shrinking equatorial territories like Africa. As such, Africa, though the world’s second-largest landmass and home to more than one billion people, is made smaller than Greenland, a landmass 14 times smaller land mass i n reality.
AU Commission Deputy Chair Selma Malika Haddadi told Reuters that Mercator use is not a trivial cartographic issue but one that has produced imagery of Africa as peripheral and marginal. “It looks like just a map, but it is not,” she said, noting that maps are powerful tools that influence identity, pride, and the world’s story.
It has been called the world’s longest misinformation and disinformation campaign by Africa No Filter’s executive director, Moky Makura, while Speak Up Africa’s Fara Ndiaye highlighted how it damages African children, who learn about it for the first time in school books.
To counteract these distortions, the Correct the Map campaign is promoting the use of the Equal Earth projection, created in 2018 as a more attractive equal-area option. Unlike Mercator, Equal Earth preserves true size ratios, providing a more balanced representation of continents but still being appropriate for educational and internet use. NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies was an early adopter, and activists are now urging world institutions like the World Bank and United Nations to follow suit.
Haddadi affirmed the AU’s plan to promote adoption among its 55 members as part of its broader mission to “reclaim Africa’s rightful place on the global stage.” Beyond Africa, too, there is growing support. Dorbrene O’Marde, Caribbean Community Reparations Commission vice-chair, described Equal Earth as a rejection of Mercator’s inherent “ideology of power and dominance.”.
