UN Resolutions restores the African Continent’s lost size on the global map

It is now official.

Africa is about to reclaim back its rightful size on the global continental mapping.

This is also going to be a big global shift in how countries of the world are visually depicted in maps and therefore mentally and psychologically perceived.

The United Nations voted by an overwhelming majority to adopt the Equal Earth Map Projection and thus replacing the almost 500-year-old Mercator Earth Mapping method used all over the world.

The old Mercator Projection Earth Map depicted lands closer to the equator smaller than they are and lands further from the equator larger than they are.

The biggest beneficiaries are the continents Africa and South America which straddle the equator.

Anyway, the United Nations just passed a resolution to update maps and represent Africa accurately.

And all the UN member states supported the motion which was pushed by Togo on behalf of the African Union (AU) member states.

But the United States opposed the new development.

For some reason America doesn’t want the world to visualize Africa’s actual size when learning Geography or world history.

It is expected that in due course all official bodies, governments and institutions in the world will use the newly UN adopted Equal Earth Map.

The United Nations has voted to adopt a resolution for the world to formally phase out the traditional Mercator map of the globe in favor of one that more accurately displays Africa’s size.

In a session at its headquarters in New York, the UN general assembly officially retired the 16th-century Mercator projection in favor of one based on the more accurate 2018 Equal Earth design.

At the session, 164 countries voted in support of the resolution.

Only the US voted no, with its representative saying the resolution was “superfluous”. There were six abstentions.

Ukraine Versus Russia

On the other hand, Ukraine abstained from voting on the resolution to correct distortions on world maps, particularly Africa’s size, it argued that the Equal Earth map included in the resolution undermined its territorial integrity by depicting Crimea as Russian territory.

Ukraine maintained that Russia illegally annexed Crimea in 2014 and said the map’s depiction was inconsistent with UN resolutions affirming Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

UN resolutions are non-enforceable, so countries and institutions will not be mandated to use only the new projection or forbidden from using the old one.

However, the outcome is expected to result in an update of classroom curriculums and everyday technology given the wide usage of the Mercator projection in education, technology and governance.

But one thing for sure, all the 55 African countries will be using the new map.

Real size of Africa

When Africa is consistently depicted as much smaller relative to northern regions than it actually is, millions of people develop a distorted mental image of the world.

• Africa covers approximately 30.4 million square kilometers.
• The United States covers approximately 9.8 million km².
• China covers approximately 9.6 million km².
• India covers approximately 3.3 million km².
• Several major European countries could still fit within the remaining area.

That is the true scale of Africa.

The Mercator layout was introduced by the Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569 to help sailors navigate the seas. Almost five centuries later, it remains the global standard.

Because of its projection style, however, regions near the equator appear significantly smaller than they are, whereas high-latitude areas look much larger.

For example, the map shows Africa as being similar in size to Greenland, but the continent is 14 times larger than the Danish territory.

“You could fit the United States, China, India, Japan, Mexico and much of Europe into Africa and still have land to spare,” says a petition on Change.org for the #CorrectTheMap campaign, which has more than 11,000 signatures.

The African Union endorsed the campaign in August 2025 and then asked Togo to spearhead its adoption.