The United Nations General Assembly has backed a resolution to formally phase out the traditional Mercator world map projection and replace it with an equal-area design that shows Africa in more accurate proportions. The vote took place at UN headquarters in New York. The assembly adopted the measure with support from 164 countries. The United States was the only country to vote against it, according to the UN tally, while six countries abstained. The resolution is non-binding, meaning it does not compel governments or organisations to use the new projection or to stop using the Mercator map. However, its adoption is expected to influence updates to classroom materials and wider use of mapping tools, given how widely Mercator is embedded in education, technology and government systems. UN Resolution Retires The Mercator projectionThe UN General Assembly formally retired the 16th-century Mercator projection in favour of an approach based on the 2018 Equal Earth design. The Mercator layout was created in 1569 by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator, originally to help sailors navigate the seas. It remains widely used as a global standard. But the projection stretches areas in higher latitudes and compresses regions near the equator, so Africa appears much smaller than it is in reality. The reporting cited an example in which Africa is shown as roughly the same size as Greenland, despite Africa being about 14 times larger than Denmark’s territory. Togo Leads Campaign After African Union EndorsementTogo sponsored the resolution, doing so on behalf of the African Union. The aim, Togo said, was to address what it described as longstanding harms from maps that misrepresent the size of regions. Togo’s government said the resolution “recognises and affirms that disproportionate cartographic representations” linked to the Mercator projection have had lasting effects across education, culture and geopolitics, including by shrinking Africa’s perceived size in global understanding. Robert Dussey, Togo’s foreign affairs minister, told the assembly before the vote that the change was driven by scientific evidence and reflected a need to accept “the reality” of Africa’s actual scale. The campaign linked to the resolution was connected to a petition on Change.org for the #CorrectTheMap initiative, which has more than 11,000 signatures. The African Union endorsed the campaign in August 2025 and asked Togo to spearhead adoption at the UN. Support, Criticism And Plans For ImplementationFrance’s foreign minister backed the resolution ahead of the vote, saying in remarks at the Sorbonne in Paris that France would move away from Mercator towards representations tailored to specific purposes, which he said better reflect actual surface areas and align with cartographers’ and scientists’ recommendations. France said it would use the Eckert IV projection, described as close to the Equal Earth approach. Debates about the Mercator map have continued for years among historians, geographers and campaign groups. Some have argued that the projection reflects Western stereotypes and have criticised it as contributing to what activists call “cartographic colonialism”. Others have linked the way the map visually frames regions to perceived effects on international power dynamics, including by making the northern hemisphere appear larger and equatorial areas smaller. One prominent alternative discussed in the campaign is the Peters world map, created by German historian Arno Peters in 1973 using the Gall–Peters projection. A senior associate at the London-based geopolitical risk advisory firm JS Held, JJ Enoch, said the Mercator projection visually diminished Africa’s true scale. He connected the push to a desire by African states for “greater influence” in global institutions and for more control over how the continent is represented. Togo said it is planning an event in Lomé, the Togolese capital, in the first quarter of next year, with Unesco, the African Union and technology firms including Google Maps, to outline how the resolution will be put into practice. Join the discussion? 5 September 2026
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