UN adopts Equal Earth map that shows Africa bigger

The United Nations General Assembly voted on September 4 to back the Equal Earth map projection, a change supporters say gives a more accurate view of the relative size of continents and makes Africa, Latin America, South Asia and Oceania appear larger than on the traditional Mercator map.

The resolution, spearheaded by several African countries and driven by Togo, was supported by 164 countries. The United States voted against it and six other states abstained.

The resolution says Equal Earth is a relevant option for improving the accuracy of world maps and urges UN member states to adopt it instead of the Mercator projection, which was designed for maritime navigation by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569.

Togo Foreign Minister Robert Dussey said maps guide education, imagination and collective perceptions, and warned that distorted maps can pass inaccurate representations from one generation to another.

The United States opposed the resolution. US representative Yaryna Ferencevych said before the vote that the debate over map projects and their role in reparations and cognitive justice was “the reason this institution is losing its credibility.”

The Mercator projection preserves shapes and angles but distorts relative landmass sizes, inflating northern regions and compressing equatorial ones. It makes Europe and North America appear much larger while shrinking Africa and South America.

A group of cartographers launched the Equal Earth projection in 2018. Cartographer Bojan Savric told AFP in 2025 that Equal Earth preserves the relative surface areas of continents and, as much as possible, shows their shapes as they appear on a globe.

France, which co-sponsored the resolution, said it would abandon the Mercator projection. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said the Mercator map gives disproportionate visual prominence to the United States, Russia and China compared with Africa, Latin America and southeast Asia. He said changing maps does not change the world, but correcting a distorted representation is “an act of truth.”