By Ephraim Agbo
For centuries most of us have learned to read the world from a single flattened view: the familiar rectangular map stretched across classroom walls and news graphics. But that picture is misleading. The Mercator projection — created for navigation in 1569 — inflates landmasses near the poles and shrinks those near the equator, producing a distorted view that makes Europe, North America and Greenland look far larger than they are and Africa smaller. In August 2025 the African Union formally lent its weight to a global campaign — “Correct The Map” — urging governments, international institutions and schools to adopt a fairer, equal-area projection such as Equal Earth. That push is both symbolic and practical: maps shape teaching, policy and what children imagine about the world.
A quick primer: what’s wrong with the Mercator map?
Gerardus Mercator produced his projection in 1569 to help mariners plot straight-line courses. The Mercator projection preserves local angles — a crucial feature for navigation — but it does so by stretching surface area increasingly toward the poles. The mathematical trade-off is simple in concept but dramatic in effect: Greenland and Europe are visually magnified; equatorial Africa is visually compressed. That’s why Greenland can appear roughly the same size as Africa on the Mercator map, even though Africa’s true area is about 14 times larger.
Why that matters goes beyond cartographic nitpicking. A map that habitually renders certain regions visually dominant helps normalise perceptions of geopolitical importance. Critics argue that the Mercator view — ubiquitous in Western classrooms, media and atlases — can subtly reinforce old hierarchies of power and influence.
The Equal Earth alternative: what it is and why it’s different
The Equal Earth projection was developed in 2018 by Bojan Šavrič, Tom Patterson and Bernhard Jenny as an equal-area pseudocylindrical projection that aims to be visually familiar (pleasant and balanced like the Robinson projection) while preserving area relationships between countries and continents. In practical terms: on an Equal Earth map, Africa looks, well, like Africa — far larger relative to Greenland and northern landmasses — so printed wall maps and classroom charts reflect true proportional sizes. The projection’s equations are straightforward to implement and it has been promoted as a classroom and institutional alternative to Mercator and to pole-biased views.
Equal-area projections are not the only technical choice (some projects prioritise shape, others distance or direction), but they are the most honest when the goal is fairness in representing relative land area. That fairness is exactly what the Correct The Map campaign is promoting.
The African Union step: symbolism and practical asks
In August 2025 the African Union publicly backed Correct The Map’s call for adoption of equal-area mapping (notably Equal Earth) by governments, international organisations and education systems. AU officials framed the move as reclaiming Africa’s visual and geopolitical standing — arguing that distorted maps have real consequences for identity, pedagogy and policy. The campaign’s immediate asks include updating school wall maps, library atlases, and the cartographic choices of influential organisations (the campaign points to institutions like the UN, World Bank and major tech platforms). Reuters reported the AU’s endorsement and described advocacy from groups such as Africa No Filter and Speak Up Africa.
Practical steps the campaign recommends include issuing new map packs for schools, encouraging media outlets and platform providers to switch default projection graphics, and engaging ministries of education to revise curriculum visuals. Several multinational organisations have already signalled small shifts away from Mercator for particular uses — a change the campaign hopes to accelerate.
Why this matters now: demographics, economics and soft power
Map reform may read as symbolic, but context explains the urgency. Africa’s population and economic footprint are expanding rapidly: Africa’s population crossed about 1.5 billion recently and is projected to rise substantially (UN and regional estimates commonly forecast somewhere between 2.5 billion and much higher by mid-century depending on scenario and timeframe). That demographic surge will expand Africa’s share of global markets, talent pools and geopolitical weight — yet if the maps used in classrooms and policy rooms keep marginalising Africa visually, public understanding can lag behind reality. Accurate cartography is part of aligning perception with prospective influence.
Education, identity and the “hidden curriculum” of maps
Maps teach more than geography; they teach status. Children internalise visual cues: sizes, centre placements and even the way a map is cropped influence what they take as “normal.” Campaigners argue that routinely shrinking Africa’s visual presence is not neutral: it conditions young learners to underestimate the continent’s scale and significance. Replacing or complementing Mercator-based materials with equal-area maps in schools could be an inexpensive but meaningful intervention in civic education and identity formation.
Practical and political pushback — and the messy reality of “one map”
Switching projection standards is not trivial. No flat map can preserve every geographic property at once — there will always be trade-offs (shape vs area vs direction vs distance). Some argue Mercator still has a valid role in navigation and specialised mapping. Others worry that multiple competing “official” projections could cause inconsistency across international datasets, cartographic workflows, and legal treaties that specify coordinates or boundaries in particular map frames.
There are also political frictions: different nations or blocs may prefer maps that center their region, and international organisations must weigh a universal standard’s benefits against the inertia of decades of material and technical work built on existing conventions. That said, many experts suggest a pragmatic path: adopt equal-area projections for education and public communications while keeping Mercator or other specialised projections for navigation and specific technical uses.
Who else is in the room — stakeholders and likely follow-through
The Correct The Map coalition already includes civil society players (Africa No Filter, Speak Up Africa), and the AU’s endorsement gives diplomatic momentum. If major international actors — UN agencies, large donors, multilateral banks, and platform companies that supply default maps in news and apps — follow suit, the shift could be rapid for educational and media contexts. Some corporate and multilateral actors have already signalled moves away from Mercator in select products and visuals; the AU is seeking broader, systemic adoption.
Recommendation — what a sensible change process might look like
- Education first: distribute Equal Earth wall maps and classroom packs in pilot school systems across AU member states; update teacher guidance so educators can explain why projection choices matter.
- Communications standards: ask major newsrooms and news-graphic providers to default to an equal-area projection for world-scale visuals where area relationships matter (e.g., demographic or development stories).
- Technical guidance: produce open-source toolkits and style guides so cartographers and GIS shops can easily render Equal Earth maps or equivalent equal-area projections.
- Multilateral dialogue: convene a UN-hosted workshop to discuss mapping standards for education, media and international reporting — not to force uniformity, but to create best-practice recommendations.
Conclusion: not about erasing history — about aligning image and reality
Map reform is not a repudiation of cartography’s long history; it’s an effort to align the images that shape public idea with contemporary realities and values. The African Union’s endorsement of Correct The Map is both symbolic and strategic: it’s a push to ensure that as Africa’s demographic, economic and political horizons expand, global representations reflect that growth. More accurate maps won’t change the world alone — but they change how people see it. And sometimes, seeing clearly is the first step to acting differently.
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