The Mercator Projection did not only distort geography, it distorted ambitions, argues
CHETA NWANZE
“Perception is reality.” – Lee Atwater.
Yesterday, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution with an overwhelming majority. The resolution encourages governments and institutions to replace the Mercator projection, the 16th-century map that has shaped how generations have visualised the world, with the Equal Earth projection, which shows continents in their true proportions. The US was the only country that dissented. The American position is worth taking seriously: the US argued the resolution promoted an “ideological agenda” and distracted from “genuine problems of international peace, prosperity or good relations”. But, in my view, the vote was not a gimmick. It was an acknowledgement that perception matters in global affairs, and that maps are the foundation on which perception is built.
A little bit of history: the 16th-century Flemish cartographer, Gerardus Mercator, designed his projection for a specific purpose: navigation. Mercator’s map allowed sailors to plot straight-line courses while maintaining constant compass bearings, and for that purpose, his map was brilliant. The trade-off was that it preserved angles and shapes at the expense of size: regions near the Earth’s poles were greatly enlarged, while landmasses near the equator were shrunk. On a Mercator map, Greenland appears roughly the same size as Africa, but in reality Africa is actually fourteen times larger. However, this distortion sticks in people’s minds, and herein lies the rub…
The distortion likely shaped more than just classroom perception. During the Scramble for Africa in the late 19th century, European powers partitioned the continent with a confidence that bordered on recklessness. They drew straight lines across maps in Berlin, dividing territories they had never set foot in. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that the Mercator Projection’s visual shrinkage of Africa contributed to this hubris. If European leaders had understood the true scale of the continent, if their maps had conveyed that Africa was fourteen times larger than Greenland and could swallow Europe several times over, they might have been more cautious in their ambitions. The map gave them permission to imagine Africa as manageable, conquerable, a place that could be carved up in an afternoon. That misperception has had consequences that have outlasted the colonial period.
Critics have long argued that the distortion created by the Mercator Projection is not neutral. It makes northern nations, including the world’s wealthiest, appear visually dominant. And when children grow up looking at maps that shrink Africa, they absorb something that no textbook can easily correct: the sense that the continent is smaller, less significant, less worthy of attention. I will never forget the shock I felt the first time I flew from Lagos to London and realised that on a six-hour flight, four hours was spent over Africa, and only two over Europe.
Mercator almost certainly had no malice when he designed his projection. He was solving a navigational problem. But the racism and geopolitical effects were unintended consequences of a technical choice. Flemish cartographers in the 16th century were not plotting to diminish Africa. They were trying to help sailors find their way across the Atlantic. The map did its job so well that it became the default world map for centuries, long after other navigational technologies superseded its original purpose. That longevity made a technical trade-off a cultural inheritance.
Dr Ikenna Okonkwo (@failedrift), my colleague, is a geologist with whom I have discussed this issue. He feels the vote was unnecessary, and he’s right to point out that no 2D map can perfectly represent a 3D sphere without distortion. Mercator’s projection sacrifices size to preserve shape and angles, which remains useful for navigation today. Google Maps still uses it. The Equal Earth projection, developed in 2018, makes different trade-offs: it preserves area accurately but distorts shapes somewhat. There is no perfect map. Every projection chooses what to preserve and what to sacrifice.
But the argument that “all maps distort, so none of this matters” misses the larger point. The intelligent question is not whether distortion exists. It is what kind of distortion best serves the map’s purpose. For navigation, Mercator remains useful. But for education, policy, and understanding the relative scale of continents, an equal-area projection does a better job.
Then there is the politics. The United States voted against the resolution, insisting it was a distraction. But American resistance actually strengthens the argument of those who voted to change the map. If the map does not matter, why oppose it? If size does not matter, why insist on preserving the projection that makes the US appear larger?
“Maps shape our understanding of the world,” Togo’s Foreign Minister Robert Dussey said before the vote. “They guide education, nourish the imagination, and influence collective perceptions.”
He was not indulging sentiment. Generations of young people, myself among them, first encountered the world through maps. Long before we grasped concepts like GDP, population, minerals, geopolitics, or capital movements, those images shaped how we perceived the size and standing of nations. When a continent spanning 30 million square kilometres is made to look roughly equal to a landmass of 2.2 million square kilometres, that distortion alters how people envision the continent and its global position.
“Changing the map obviously doesn’t change the world,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot acknowledged after the vote. “But correcting a representation that distorts it is already an act of truth.”
Moky Makura of Africa No Filter put it more sharply: “If we got something as basic as Africa’s size wrong for this long, what else about Africa have we simply accepted without questioning? Africa doesn’t need to be made bigger. It needs to be seen accurately.”
The resolution does not ban the Mercator projection. It only encourages the use of Equal Earth. The real work is implementation: getting accurate maps into schools, textbooks, newsrooms and digital platforms. That will take time. But the effects will compound. A generation of children raised on maps that show Africa in its true proportions will come of age with a different visual understanding of the world. They will not see Africa as a footnote. They will see it as the scale of its population, its resources, its challenges and its opportunities.
The geopolitical implications of this generational shift should not be underestimated. The Mercator projection did not merely distort geography; it distorted ambition. For centuries, European and American leaders made decisions about Africa based on a visual representation that made the continent look insignificant. That misperception shaped colonial borders, investment decisions and strategic calculations. The Equal Earth projection will not erase that history, but ultimately, it will reshape how future leaders, African and non-African alike, conceive of the continent. An African diplomat who grew up seeing Africa as a vast, formidable landmass may approach negotiations differently from one who internalised its diminished size. A European policymaker whose schoolroom showed Africa stretching across the equator, fourteen times larger than Greenland, may think twice before treating the continent as a single village. The map will not determine outcomes, but it will set the terms of perception. And perception, in geopolitics, is often the difference between being taken seriously and being dismissed.
That will not happen overnight. But in two or three decades, when those children enter positions of power and influence, they will carry with them a map that does not shrink their imagination.
Dr Ikenna is right that the science of map projections is technical and trade-offs are unavoidable. But the politics of representation is not technical. It is about how people see the world and, more importantly, how they see themselves in it. Friday’s vote was not about changing geography. It was about changing perception. And perception, as every cartographer knows, is the map that matters most.
Nwanze is a partner at SBM Intelligence