You’ve probably looked at a flat world map thousands of times in your life, but almost everything you think you know about global land sizes is a lie. For centuries, standard classrooms and textbooks have relied on a 16th-century navigational chart that shrinks entire continents and inflates others.
When the United Nations General Assembly recently voted to back a resolution replacing the traditional Mercator map projection, it wasn't just a win for cartographers. It was a long-overdue correction of a visual bias that has warped our collective worldview for generations. France recently announced it is abandoning the Mercator projection in its official and educational materials, following a push led by African nations like Togo and the broader African Union. For another view, check out: this related article.
The Flawed Legacy of Gerardus Mercator
To understand why this matters, you have to look back to 1569. Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator did not design his famous projection to teach school children about geography or to display global geopolitics. He built a tool for sailors.
His primary goal was simple: make it possible for ships to plot a course using straight lines and constant compass bearings. To achieve that on a flat piece of paper representing a round globe, he had to stretch the grid. Further analysis regarding this has been provided by Al Jazeera.
The farther a landmass sits from the equator, the more the Mercator projection stretches it out. Near the poles, things swell massively. Equatorial regions, meanwhile, stay compressed.
The distortions create absurd visual lies:
- Greenland looks roughly the same size as the entire continent of Africa.
- In reality, Africa is about fourteen times larger than Greenland.
- North America and Europe appear vastly larger and more central than equatorial regions.
Maps shape how we perceive importance, power, and human geography. When children grow up seeing a tiny Africa and a giant Europe every single day, those distortions take root in their subconscious minds.
Why France and the UN Are Making the Switch
The recent UN resolution, passed with 164 votes in favor, urges member states to move away from the Mercator projection and adopt alternatives like the Equal Earth map. Developed by cartographers in 2018, Equal Earth preserves true relative surface areas while keeping shapes looking natural.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot made waves at the Sorbonne University by declaring that France would scrap the Mercator projection for representations that are faithful to actual surface areas. He noted explicitly that the United States, Russia, and China take on a disproportionate visual prominence on standard maps while regions like Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia get squeezed.
This shift goes deeper than technical accuracy. Advocacy groups like Speak Up Africa and Africa No Filter spent years campaigning under the banner "Correct The Map" to fix what they call centuries of cartographic miseducation. Nations like Togo pushed the issue to the international stage to dismantle inherited colonial biases embedded in everyday tools.
What You Can Do About It
If you are an educator, a content creator, or just someone who cares about factual accuracy, stop treating default digital mapping settings as the absolute truth.
Check the graphics you use in presentations or classrooms. Modern tools and web platforms allow you to choose equal-area projections easily. Shifting away from lazy cartographic habits means giving every part of the world its proper visual weight. Stop letting a 450-year-old shipping chart dictate how you see the planet.
Campaigners want to change world map to show Africa is bigger
This video provides additional context on the global movement led by African nations and organizations to replace the distorted Mercator projection with maps that accurately reflect the continent's true size.
