Why Africa Wants the World to See Its True Size

On classroom walls across the globe, there hangs a familiar map. For generations, schoolchildren have looked up at it and seen the world divided into neat rectangles. To most, it is simply a teaching tool, a chart of continents and oceans. Yet behind those lines lies a subtle distortion that has shaped how the world perceives Africa for centuries.

The African Union (AU), according to the Guardian, has now decided that this distortion cannot be ignored any longer. With the backing of all 55 member states, it has endorsed the “Correct the Map” campaign, a movement calling for governments and international organisations to abandon the 16th-century Mercator projection in favour of maps that reflect Africa’s true size. At the heart of the issue is not geography alone, but identity and political influence.

The Mercator projection was created in 1569 by Gerardus Mercator, a Flemish cartographer. Its purpose was navigation. By stretching out the poles, it allowed sailors to plot straight lines across the oceans, a vital tool in the age of European exploration and conquest. But what worked for mariners on the seas produced a false image of the world on land.

Africa, the world’s second-largest continent with more than one billion people, appears diminished. Greenland, with a fraction of its landmass and fewer than 60,000 inhabitants, looks nearly the same size. North America looms larger than life, while South America and Africa are squeezed down.

Selma Malika Haddadi, the deputy chair of the African Union Commission, explained to Reuters that this distortion carries weight far beyond classrooms. “It might seem to be a map, but in reality, it is not,” she said. By making Africa look smaller, the projection fosters a subconscious impression that the continent is marginal, a side player in global affairs rather than a central force.

The consequences show up in education and in media. Generations of children in Africa have grown up seeing their continent portrayed as less significant than it truly is. For many, that early visual lesson lingers.

The Mercator projection has been criticised before. In the 1970s, activists and educators pointed to how it reflected colonial mindsets. But the debate lost momentum until recently, when advocacy groups Africa No Filter and Speak Up Africa launched the Correct the Map campaign in 2024.

The campaign champions the Equal Earth projection, introduced in 2018, which was designed specifically to reflect landmasses in proportion to their real sizes while still offering a visually balanced world map.

Moky Makura, executive director of Africa No Filter, has called the Mercator projection “the world’s longest misinformation and disinformation campaign.” She argues that every year the map remains in circulation, it reinforces outdated hierarchies. Fara Ndiaye, co-founder of Speak Up Africa, has focused on education. She described how children first meet the map in school, often before they are able to question its accuracy. If Africa appears smaller, she said, then children begin to think of themselves as smaller too.

The campaign is not only about classrooms. It has pressed organisations such as the World Bank and the United Nations to formally adopt Equal Earth. The World Bank has already begun phasing out Mercator maps, while the UN is reviewing the request. Change takes time in international institutions, but the conversation has begun.

Some might argue that maps are technical instruments, and that whether one continent looks slightly larger or smaller is of little consequence. But history shows otherwise. Maps have always been tied to power. In the colonial era, they were tools of conquest, carving up Africa into territories that suited European empires rather than the people who lived there. Borders drawn by foreign hands remain flashpoints of conflict today.

Dorbrene O’Marde, vice-chair of the Caribbean Community (Caricom) Reparations Commission, recently endorsed the Equal Earth map. He described it as a rejection of the Mercator’s “ideology of power and dominance.” For the Caribbean, another region historically reshaped by slavery and colonial cartography, the issue resonates.

Maps do not merely describe the world, they also shape how it is imagined. A continent portrayed as small may be seen as weak and peripheral. That perception can filter into economics and diplomacy, often in ways so subtle that no one questions their origins.

By backing the Correct the Map campaign, the African Union has placed cartography into the heart of its political project. Haddadi has said the initiative aligns with the AU’s broader mission of “reclaiming Africa’s rightful place on the global stage.” This effort sits alongside louder debates over reparations for colonialism and slavery, and growing demands for greater representation in global governance.

The AU plans to work with member states to promote Equal Earth in schools, in government agencies, and eventually in foreign ministries and embassies. The goal is to make Equal Earth the default image of the continent both inside and outside Africa.

There is a symbolic weight to this ambition. For decades, African voices have challenged the structures that keep the continent at the margins of international politics. The Mercator map may seem trivial compared to debt burdens or trade imbalances, yet it forms part of the same ecosystem of representation.

The Mercator projection is not disappearing easily. It remains widely used by schools and tech platforms. Google Maps shifted its desktop version to a 3D globe view in 2018, allowing users to see countries in correct proportion, but its mobile app still defaults to the Mercator style. Many educators and publishers also continue to use it out of habit, or because it has become familiar to generations.

There is also a technical challenge. No flat map can ever be truly accurate. The earth is a sphere, and any attempt to flatten it will involve compromises. Some projections preserve shape, others preserve size. Equal Earth prioritises size, which means coastlines and angles appear somewhat altered.

This limitation has led some geographers to stress that there is no single “correct” map, only choices that reflect values and priorities. In that sense, the AU’s decision is not about replacing one falsehood with truth, but about choosing a representation that aligns more closely with Africa’s reality and dignity.

To understand the importance of this debate, it helps to imagine the reverse. Suppose maps had long exaggerated Africa while shrinking Europe and North America. Suppose generations of Western schoolchildren had looked at a globe where their countries seemed tiny. Would they have grown up with the same confidence, the same expectation of centrality in global affairs?

For many Africans, that thought experiment is no abstraction. It echoes their lived experience of being treated as peripheral, despite their continent’s vast resources and history. Correcting the map will not solve economic or political inequalities overnight. But it may reshape imagination, the first step toward reshaping reality.

In Congolese classrooms, in Nigerian universities, in the parliaments of South Africa and Senegal, children and lawmakers may soon look at maps where Africa stands tall in its true proportions. That simple visual correction has the power to affirm a new sense of belonging in the world.

The Mercator projection once served an age of exploration defined by empire and conquest. The Equal Earth map, by contrast, belongs to an age seeking fairness and recognition. The African Union’s campaign is a reminder that even the quiet lines of a map carry politics within them. What the world chooses to see, and how it chooses to see it, matters.