Grace Ashiru
The African Union is advocating for a new cartographic standard to address what it describes as a distorted and marginalizing portrayal of the continent.
On the well-known Mercator projection map, Africa appears only slightly larger than Greenland. In reality, however, Africa is 15 times larger, covering 30.37 million square kilometers, compared to Greenland’s 2.16 million.
This distortion contributes to a misleading perception of Africa as a “marginal” continent, despite its status as the second-largest in the world, with 54 countries and over a billion people, according to Selma Malika Haddadi, Vice President of the AU Commission.
The “Correct The Map” campaign, launched by Africa No Filter and Speak Up Africa, aims to introduce the 2018 Equal Earth map model into African school curricula and encourage its use by international organizations. The World Bank has already started employing Equal Earth for some static maps and is reducing its reliance on Mercator in web maps.
Developed in 1569 by Gerardus Mercator to assist with naval navigation during the era of the triangular trade, the Mercator projection maintains the shapes of continents but distorts their sizes. Areas near the poles appear enlarged, while regions near the equator, such as Africa and South America, are compressed.
This distortion continues to dominate in school textbooks and media today. The African Union hopes that this reform in cartography will serve as a tool to “restore Africa’s legitimate place” on the global stage. It plans to collaborate with member states and major international organizations to drive this change.
The success of this initiative, however, will hinge on its adoption by African education ministries, the choices made by international organizations, and the updating of online mapping tools, where Mercator is still the default, especially on mobile apps like Google Maps.
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