Africa’s size on commonly used world maps has come under renewed global attention after the United Nations General Assembly backed a resolution encouraging countries to adopt a different cartographic projection that more accurately represents the relative size of the world’s landmasses.
The resolution, spearheaded by African countries and driven by Togo, received the support of 164 countries during Friday’s vote. The United States voted against the proposal, while six countries — Serbia, Estonia, Georgia, Lithuania, Moldova and Ukraine — abstained.
At the centre of the debate is the Equal Earth projection, a world map designed to preserve the relative surface areas of continents more accurately than the Mercator projection that has dominated conventional world maps for centuries.
The United Nations resolution describes Equal Earth as a relevant option for improving the accuracy of the world’s cartographic representation. However, it does not make the new projection compulsory or prohibit the continued use of the Mercator map.
The vote has nevertheless reignited a broader discussion about how maps influence perceptions of geography, particularly the way Africa, South America and other regions near the Equator can appear significantly smaller than their actual land area.
Why Africa looks smaller on conventional maps
The conventional Mercator projection dates back to 1569, when Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator developed it primarily for maritime navigation.
Its strength was its ability to preserve shapes and angles in ways that made it particularly useful for navigation. The problem was that representing a three-dimensional globe on a flat surface inevitably required compromises, and the projection did not preserve the relative sizes of landmasses.
The distortion becomes increasingly pronounced toward the northern and southern extremes of the map. As a result, areas such as Europe and North America appear much larger relative to regions closer to the Equator.
Africa is one of the continents most affected by that visual distortion.
On a conventional Mercator map, Africa can appear broadly comparable in size to Greenland. In reality, the difference is enormous: Africa covers approximately 30.3 million square kilometres, while Greenland is about 14 times smaller.
That difference illustrates the central issue behind the UN-backed resolution. The physical size of Africa has not changed, but the way it is displayed on a flat map can create a very different visual impression.
Africa’s actual size
Africa covers about 30.3 million square kilometres, equivalent to roughly 11.7 million square miles.
Its land area is so extensive that the continent could accommodate the United States, China, India and most of Europe within its boundaries.
The comparison becomes particularly striking when Africa is viewed alongside other major regions whose scale can also be distorted by conventional projections.
Latin America covers approximately 20 million square kilometres, or about 7.7 million square miles. South America alone accounts for approximately 17.8 million square kilometres, equivalent to around 6.9 million square miles.
Oceania covers roughly 8.5 million square kilometres, or about 3.3 million square miles, with Australia accounting for almost all of that area.
South Asia is considerably smaller geographically, covering about 5.1 million square kilometres, or approximately 2 million square miles. Despite its comparatively smaller land area, the region is home to about a quarter of the world’s population.
Together, Africa, Latin America, Oceania and South Asia account for approximately 64 million square kilometres, representing more than 40 per cent of the world’s land surface.
Europe, by comparison, covers about 10.2 million square kilometres, or approximately 3.9 million square miles.
These figures help illustrate why advocates of alternative projections argue that the appearance of continents on world maps matters. A projection that enlarges some regions while reducing others can affect how people intuitively understand the geographical scale of different parts of the world.
Togo leads campaign for a different map
Togo played a leading role in bringing the issue before the United Nations, with Foreign Minister Robert Dussey arguing that maps have a significant influence beyond their practical use.
Dussey said maps help shape education and imagination and influence how societies perceive the world around them.
Following the adoption of the resolution, he said the decision reaffirmed what he described as the reality of Africa’s geographical size.
The resolution calls attention to the Equal Earth projection as an option for presenting the world’s continents with greater accuracy in terms of their relative areas.
The initiative does not, however, seek to change the physical geography of the planet. Rather, its focus is on changing the visual framework through which that geography is commonly presented.
What is Equal Earth?
The Equal Earth projection was introduced in 2018 by cartographers Bojan Savric, Tom Patterson and Bernhard Jenny.
Savric is associated with the Environmental Systems Research Institute, Patterson with the US National Park Service, and Jenny with Monash University.
The projection was developed with a different priority from Mercator: preserving the relative surface areas of continents while maintaining shapes as reasonably close as possible to their appearance on a globe.
Savric explained to AFP in 2025 that Equal Earth preserves the relative surface areas of continents and, as far as possible, presents their shapes as they appear on the globe.
That approach makes the projection particularly relevant to the concerns raised by countries supporting the UN resolution, because the principal issue is not that Mercator is useless, but that it was designed for a specific navigational purpose rather than for accurately comparing the relative sizes of continents.
The UN resolution therefore encourages governments and institutions around the world to consider Equal Earth for their maps.
France supports the change
The proposal received backing beyond Africa, with France among the countries that co-sponsored the resolution.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot announced on Friday that France would abandon the Mercator projection.
Barrot argued that the conventional map gives countries and regions such as the United States, Russia and China disproportionate visual prominence compared with Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia.
He also pointed to Greenland’s appearance on the Mercator projection, noting that it can appear almost as large as Africa despite the enormous difference between their actual areas.
According to Barrot, changing a map does not change the world itself, but correcting a distorted representation can be regarded as an effort to present geographical reality more accurately.
France’s position added significant international backing to the resolution, which was otherwise driven heavily by African countries seeking greater recognition of the continent’s actual geographical scale.
Why did the United States oppose it?
The United States was the only country to vote against the resolution.
Before the vote, US representative Yaryna Ferencevych criticised the initiative and questioned whether the United Nations should be spending its attention on the issue.
Ferencevych described the resolution as evidence of what she considered a decline in the institution’s credibility, arguing that the organisation should focus on what she called genuine global problems rather than a map project originating from the 16th century.
The US objection therefore focused less on whether Africa is accurately represented in terms of land area and more on whether the United Nations should formally promote a particular cartographic projection.
The vote demonstrated that while the proposal attracted overwhelming support, there was disagreement over the appropriate role of the UN in encouraging governments and institutions to alter commonly used maps.
The map is not being made compulsory
Despite the significance attached to Friday’s vote, the world will not immediately switch to Equal Earth.
The UN resolution is not legally binding. It does not ban Mercator maps, nor does it impose Equal Earth as the world’s mandatory projection.
Instead, the resolution is intended to encourage governments, educational institutions and other organisations to consider using Equal Earth when presenting the relative sizes of global landmasses.
This distinction is important because different map projections serve different purposes. Mercator remains useful for certain navigational applications, while equal-area projections are designed to provide a more faithful comparison of the surface areas occupied by different regions.
The UN’s action therefore amounts to encouragement rather than a global cartographic mandate.
What could change?
If governments, schools, publishers and other institutions respond to the resolution by adopting Equal Earth more widely, people could increasingly encounter maps on which Africa appears closer to its true geographical scale.
The change would not alter borders, land area or the physical position of any continent. What would change is the visual representation used to communicate those facts.
For Africa in particular, supporters argue that this distinction is significant because the continent’s enormous landmass is frequently underestimated when viewed through conventional Mercator maps.
The broader argument is that cartography does more than place countries on paper. The choices made by mapmakers can affect how people perceive distance, scale and the relative importance of different regions.
A debate about geography and perception
The UN vote has consequently become about more than choosing one map projection over another. It has opened a debate over how geographical representations shape people’s understanding of the world.
Africa’s approximately 30.3 million square kilometres remain exactly the same regardless of which projection is used. What changes is the way that area is visually communicated.
Equal Earth offers one approach by maintaining relative surface areas, while Mercator was designed with the different priority of preserving useful shapes and angles for navigation.
The overwhelming vote in favour of encouraging Equal Earth reflects growing support for maps that make comparisons of continental size more intuitive. The US opposition, meanwhile, highlights disagreement over whether the United Nations should devote institutional attention to such a cartographic question.
For now, the Mercator projection remains available and widely used. But with 164 countries supporting the resolution, the United Nations has given international momentum to an alternative map that aims to make one fundamental fact harder to overlook: Africa is far larger than the conventional world map often makes it appear.
How Big Is Africa Really? UN Backs Map That Shows the Continent More Accurately
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