U.N. endorses Equal Earth map showing Africa's true size; U.S. alone opposes

On Friday, the United Nations General Assembly voted to endorse a different way of drawing the world. One hundred sixty-four countries raised their hands in favor of replacing the Mercator projection—the map that has hung in classrooms and guided understanding for five centuries—with the Equal Earth projection, which shows continents as they actually are. The United States voted no. Six others abstained: Serbia, Estonia, Georgia, Lithuania, Moldova, and Ukraine.

The resolution, sponsored by Togo and supported by members of the African Union, does not ban the old map or force anyone to switch. It simply encourages governments and institutions worldwide to consider a different representation. But the vote itself carries weight. It is a formal acknowledgment, from nearly every nation on Earth, that the way we have been drawing Africa has been wrong.

The Mercator projection was designed in the 16th century by a Flemish cartographer named Gerardus Mercator to help European navigators plot courses across open water. It worked for that purpose. But it distorted everything else. The projection enlarged landmasses near the poles—Greenland, North America, Russia—while shrinking those along the equator. On a Mercator map, Greenland and Africa appear roughly the same size. In reality, Africa is fourteen times larger. The Equal Earth projection, developed in 2018, follows the curve of the planet and shows each continent in its true proportion.

Geographers have long noted that the Mercator map is useful only for navigation. For everything else—for understanding the world, for education, for how we imagine our place in it—the distortion has been a problem. Togo's Foreign Minister Robert Dussey put it plainly before the vote: "Maps shape our understanding of the world. They guide education, nourish the imagination and influence collective perceptions." A map that shrinks Africa makes Africa seem smaller, less significant, less real.

Africa No Filter, one of the organizations that led the campaign for the new projection, responded to the vote with a statement about where the change matters most: "We want to see accurate maps in schools, textbooks, newsrooms, businesses and on the digital platforms billions of people use every day." These are the places where maps do their quiet work, shaping what children learn and what adults assume to be true.

France's Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot offered a thought that cuts to the heart of why this vote, which changes nothing materially, still means something. "Changing the map obviously doesn't change the world," he said on social media. "But correcting a representation that distorts it is already an act of truth."

The United States stood alone in its opposition. No explanation was offered for the vote. The resolution does not mandate change—it only encourages it—so the Mercator projection will not disappear from walls or textbooks simply because the General Assembly has spoken. But the vote signals a shift in how the world's nations want to see themselves represented, and in whose version of the map gets to be called accurate.