The United Nations has voted to adopt a resolution calling for the world to formally phase out the traditional Mercator map in favour of more accurate projections that better reflect Africa’s true size.
In a session at UN headquarters in New York, the General Assembly endorsed a move away from the 16th-century Mercator projection, recommending instead the use of equal-area designs such as the 2018 Equal Earth map. The resolution passed with 164 countries voting in favour. The United States voted against, with its representative describing the measure as “superfluous”, while six countries abstained.
UN resolutions are non-binding, so member states and institutions will not be legally required to abandon the Mercator projection. However, the outcome is expected to influence classroom curricula, textbooks, digital mapping platforms and official publications, given the widespread use of the Mercator design in education, technology and governance.
Togo, which spearheaded the campaign on behalf of the African Union, said the resolution “recognises and affirms that disproportionate cartographic representations, particularly those resulting from the Mercator projection, have had lasting cognitive, educational, cultural, geopolitical and socioeconomic effects, contributing to a drastic reduction in the perceived size of Africa and other regions of the world in the global collective imagination”.
Robert Dussey, Togo’s foreign affairs minister, told the assembly: “This discussion is not a political discussion [but] a scientific discussion, because there is scientific proof so we all have to accept the reality.”
The Mercator projection was introduced by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569 to assist maritime navigation. Nearly five centuries later, it remains the global standard, despite well-documented distortions.
Because of its cylindrical projection style, regions near the equator appear significantly smaller than they are, while high-latitude areas look much larger. On a Mercator map, Africa appears roughly the same size as Greenland, even though the continent is about 14 times larger than the Danish territory.
“You could fit the United States, China, India, Japan, Mexico and much of Europe into Africa and still have land to spare,” reads a petition on Change.org for the #CorrectTheMap campaign, which has gathered more than 11,000 signatures. The African Union endorsed the campaign in August 2025 and subsequently asked Togo to lead efforts to secure UN backing.
Ahead of the vote, France’s foreign minister voiced support for the resolution. “We will abandon the Mercator projection in favour of map representations tailored to specific uses, more faithful to actual surface areas and in line with the recommendations of cartographers and scientists,” Jean-Noël Barrot said during a speech at Sorbonne University in Paris. France will now use the Eckert IV projection, which is close to the Equal Earth design recommended in the resolution.
Historians and geographers have long argued that the Mercator projection reinforces Western-centric stereotypes. Activists have described the effect as “cartographic colonialism”, saying the map has subtly shaped international power dynamics by minimising the physical presence of the global south while visually inflating northern hemisphere nations.
Critics contend this has reinforced systemic biases in international trade, development priorities and educational frameworks. One of the Mercator projection’s most prominent critics was German historian Arno Peters, who launched the Peters world map based on the Gall–Peters projection in 1973. It has often been used as an alternative in classrooms and publications.
Togo’s #CorrectTheMap campaign promoted the 2018 Equal Earth design, developed by an international team of cartographers. Supporters say the shift will help reverse perceptions of Africa and decolonise global curricula.
JJ Enoch, a London-based senior associate at JS Held, a geopolitical risk advisory firm, said the Mercator projection visually diminishes Africa’s true scale. He linked the campaign to a broader quest by African nations for “greater influence in global institutions and greater control over how the continent is represented”.
“Adopting an equal-area map … would provide a more accurate basis for education and public understanding, while signalling that Africa’s demographic, economic and geopolitical importance should no longer be viewed through inherited and distorted conventions,” Enoch said.
Togo’s government is planning an event in Lomé, the Togolese capital, with UNESCO, the African Union and technology companies including Google Maps in the first quarter of next year to map out implementation of the resolution.
“To those who say why now, I say: why not?” Dussey said ahead of the vote. “When we look at the world map … it is time for us to change the narrative.”
He added: “It’s time for us in Africa to take responsibility to change what we can change ourselves.”
