(Posted 06th September 2026O
The UN General Assembly has voted overwhelmingly to encourage governments, schools and tech companies worldwide to stop using maps that make Africa look far smaller than it really is.
By 164 votes to one, Member States on Friday endorsed a resolution promoting map projections that more accurately reflect the true size of continents – the culmination of an African-led campaign against the 16th-century Mercator projection, still the most widely used map in the world.
The United States cast the sole vote against, dismissing the initiative as part of a “radical ideological project.” showing her open contempt for the African continent and that in the wake of the US government changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico and of Lake Ontario – something most of the world ignored.
Six countries – Estonia, Georgia, Lithuania, Moldova, Serbia and Ukraine – abstained and opted not to support the African initiative in the UN General Assembly.
Africa, when the new maps and globes are printed and produced, will finally show its true size which
It was Togo which led the negotiations on behalf of the African group, building on a campaign backed by the African Union.
The resolution describes correcting such distortions as an act of “cognitive justice and memorial reparation” and points to Equal Earth, developed in 2018, as a projection that more accurately represents relative size.
Mr. Dussey emphasized that the effort was not meant to condemn Mercator, whose usefulness for navigation he acknowledged, or to impose a single projection.
“A fair map does not change the geography of the world, it changes how we see the world,” he said.
Africa is massive enough to fit the United States, China, India, Japan, Mexico, and much of Europe combined inside its 30.37 million square kilometer (11.7 million square mile) land area, something the new map will be able to show rather than leaving it to people’s imagination as was the case in the past.
