UN Backs New World Map in 164–1 Vote to Show Africa’s True Scale

UNITED NATIONS, New York — September 4, 2026 — The United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly endorsed a resolution encouraging the use of world maps that more accurately represent the relative sizes of continents.

The resolution passed with 164 countries voting in favor, while the United States cast the only opposing vote. Estonia, Georgia, Lithuania, Moldova, Serbia and Ukraine abstained.

The measure promotes the Equal Earth projection, a modern mapping system designed to preserve the relative surface areas of continents while maintaining recognizable shapes across a two-dimensional representation of Earth.

 

 

 

The initiative was spearheaded by Togo and supported by the African Union, which has campaigned for maps that portray Africa more accurately relative to Europe, North America and other regions.

Supporters argue the familiar Mercator projection, created by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569, significantly exaggerates landmasses farther from the equator while making equatorial regions appear comparatively smaller.

Mercator developed his projection primarily for maritime navigation. Its preservation of angles and compass directions made it extremely useful to sailors, but those advantages came at the expense of accurate land-area representation.

One of the most frequently cited examples involves Greenland and Africa. On many Mercator maps, Greenland appears comparable in size despite Africa actually being approximately 14 times larger.

Equal Earth addresses that problem by preserving proportional land areas, meaning Africa, South America and other regions closer to the equator appear substantially larger than viewers accustomed to Mercator maps might expect.

 

 

The Equal Earth projection was introduced by cartographers in 2018 and attempts to combine accurate relative areas with visually familiar continental shapes, providing an alternative for educational and general-purpose world maps.

The resolution does not redraw national borders, alter territorial sovereignty or physically change countries. Instead, it concerns how the spherical Earth is mathematically represented on flat maps used worldwide.

It also does not legally ban Mercator maps. Governments, schools and private organizations are instead encouraged to use Equal Earth or other equal-area projections when accurate comparisons of geographic size are important.

That distinction is significant because every flat representation of a spherical planet contains some distortion. Cartographers select different projections depending on whether area, direction, distance, shape or another characteristic matters most.

Togo’s Foreign Minister Robert Dussey argued before the vote that maps influence education and collective perceptions, making the way continents are represented more consequential than a purely technical cartographic decision.

The African-led campaign maintains that generations of students have encountered world maps visually minimizing Africa while enlarging northern regions, helping create an inaccurate perception of the continent’s geographic scale.

The United States opposed the resolution, arguing that the General Assembly should concentrate on more pressing international challenges and criticizing language connecting cartographic representation with reparations and “cognitive justice.”

France, by contrast, supported the initiative. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot described correcting distorted geographic representation as an act of truth while acknowledging that changing maps does not change physical geography.

The resolution could eventually influence classrooms, textbooks, media organizations and digital platforms, although implementation will depend on individual governments, educational institutions and technology companies rather than a mandatory global replacement.

The change could be particularly noticeable in classrooms because students viewing Equal Earth maps will see Africa, Latin America, South Asia and Oceania represented differently from their appearance on conventional Mercator maps.

Digital mapping presents a more complicated picture. Online services can use different projections at different zoom levels, while specialized navigation applications may continue using projections selected for their particular technical requirements.

The UN itself notes that no single projection can perfectly translate Earth’s curved surface onto a flat plane, meaning different projections remain useful depending on the intended purpose of a map.

The vote therefore represents a recommendation about global cartographic representation rather than a literal rewriting of geography, despite social-media headlines suggesting that 164 countries voted simply to “change the world map.”

For supporters, however, the overwhelming 164–1 vote represents something larger: an international effort to ensure that the maps encountered by future generations portray Africa and other regions in more proportionally accurate dimensions.