The United Nations General Assembly has approved a resolution urging governments, schools, and technology companies worldwide to adopt maps that accurately reflect Africa’s true size, moving away from the centuries-old Mercator projection.
The resolution, passed on Friday, was spearheaded by Togo and backed by the African Union.
It received overwhelming support from 164 member states, with only the United States voting against and six countries abstaining.
Togo’s Foreign Minister, Robert Dussey, emphasized that the initiative is not about changing geography but about correcting perceptions: “A fair map does not change the world’s geography; it changes how we see the world.”
The resolution highlights the Equal Earth projection, developed in 2018, as a more accurate representation of landmass sizes.
While it does not ban the Mercator projection, it calls for equal-area maps to be used in education and technology to expose the limitations of flat maps in depicting a spherical planet.
Supporters framed the move as an act of “cognitive justice and memorial reparation,” addressing historical distortions that minimized Africa’s scale.
France has already signaled plans to adopt Equal Earth maps, aligning with the African Union’s push.
The U.S., however, dismissed the resolution as undermining the UN’s credibility, criticizing references to reparations and “cognitive justice” as ideological.
Ukraine supported correcting distortions but raised concerns about how some Equal Earth maps depict territories occupied by Russia.
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