UN General Assembly votes for corrected world map with larger representation of Africa

The United Nations General Assembly has voted to replace the traditional world map with a new version that more accurately depicts the size of Africa. 164 countries voted in favor of the resolution “Correct the map”, introduced by Togo and supported by members of the African Union, 6 countries abstained, and the USA was the only nation to vote against. The voting result is not binding, but should lead to changes to maps worldwide.

The world map that is most commonly used internationally today is based on the so-called Mercator projection. According to the Federal Office for Cartography and Geodesy (BKG), this was developed for sea travel in 1569 by the cartographer Gerardus Mercator. At that time it was known that it did not represent the size of the countries accurately, but rather distorted it. For example, in some designs, Greenland appears to be as large as the entire continent of Africa. If you look at a globe, however, you will notice that Africa is many times larger - the area of ​​the continent is therefore almost 14 times larger than that of Greenland.

The problem with this map is the distortion of areas: in the usual projection, these become larger the further away they are from the equator. Finally, the three-dimensional Earth, which is actually almost spherical, is projected onto a two-dimensional, rectangular surface.

Togo's foreign minister celebrates historic moment

Togo's Foreign Minister, Robert Dussey, wrote on Platform X after the vote: "Historic moment: The world has decided to correct the map." The decision goes far beyond pure cartography. "It's about justice, dignity, equality and how we represent our world." For too long, traditional cartographic representations have distorted the perception of the actual size of Africa and other regions of the world. »To correct the map is to correct the way we see the world.«