UN Votes to Adopt New World Map to Correct Africa's Size
The world map most people grew up with just got an official correction, at least on paper. The United Nations General Assembly voted on September 4 to adopt the "Correct the Map" resolution, encouraging governments, schools, media outlets, and tech companies to swap the centuries-old Mercator projection for one that shows countries closer to their true relative size. The vote passed 164 to 1, with six countries abstaining. The United States cast the lone vote against it.
The resolution was introduced by Togo on behalf of African Union member states, with backing from the Bahamas. It targets the Mercator projection, a map style created by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569 to help sailors navigate by preserving straight-line compass bearings. That design comes with a tradeoff: land near the equator gets visually compressed, while regions farther north and south, like Europe and Greenland, appear far bigger than they actually are.
The distortion is significant. Africa is roughly 14 times larger than Greenland in real terms, yet on a standard Mercator map, the two often look similar in size. Togo's foreign minister, Robert Dussey, told the Assembly before the vote that maps shape education and collective perception, and that a fairer map "does not change the geography of the world, it changes how we see the world."
The resolution points to the Equal Earth projection, developed in 2018 by cartographers Bojan Šavrič and Bernie Jenny, as the preferred alternative. Equal Earth preserves relative land area, so Africa, South America, and other regions near the equator appear at something closer to their actual scale; Europe, North America, and Greenland shrink down to size.
It is worth being clear about what the resolution does not do. It does not ban the Mercator projection, does not require any country or company to switch maps, and carries no legal force. The UN press release on the vote describes it as a recommendation rather than a rule, and the European Union stated explicitly that the measure has no bearing on sovereignty, territorial status, or internationally recognized borders.
Not every abstention was about cartography as an abstract exercise. Ukraine's delegation said it supported the resolution's broader goal but objected to how the Equal Earth base map depicts Crimea and other Russian-occupied territory, calling that depiction inconsistent with existing General Assembly resolutions on the matter. Estonia, Georgia, Lithuania, Moldova, and Serbia also abstained.
The U.S. delegation took a harder line. Ambassador Mike Waltz called the effort part of a broader ideological push and dismissed similar resolutions as distractions that erode the UN's credibility.
Supporters framed the outcome differently. The African Union celebrated the vote on social media, saying the new emphasis on equal-area maps would help classrooms, newsrooms, and international institutions finally reflect Africa's true scale. Carlos Lopes, a University of Cape Town professor and longtime advocate for the Correct the Map campaign, called the result an emotional milestone after years of pushing the issue.
Whether the shift actually shows up on classroom walls, news broadcasts, and smartphone map apps is now up to the individual governments, schools, and companies to which the resolution was addressed. None of them is obligated to change anything.
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