UN votes to correct the map — and Africa’s place in it — as U.S. casts lone no vote

The United Nations General Assembly voted Friday in favor of a world mapping guideline meant to correct a distortion that has shaped public perception for centuries: the way Africa is sized on most maps.

The resolution, titled “Correct the Map,” was introduced by Togo with backing from African Union members and passed with 164 votes in favor, six abstentions and one no vote. The United States was the only country to vote against it.

Symbolic as the vote is, it is intended to change real-world practice. Governments, schools, publishers, international agencies and technology companies are urged to turn to projections that preserve true area — specifically the “Equal Earth” projection and similar equal-area maps — whenever relative size matters.

The familiar world map is rooted in the Mercator projection, developed by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569 largely for navigation. It made compass routes practical but badly distorted the proportions of continents, especially those farther from the equator. The effect remains visible in many classrooms and media illustrations: on a typical Mercator map, Greenland can look almost as large as Africa, even though the African continent is nearly 14 times bigger.

In the corridor diplomacy that usually surrounds such resolutions, the vote was framed as a turning point. “THE WORLD HAS CHOSEN TO CORRECT THE MAP,” Togo’s Foreign Minister Robert Dussey wrote on X, celebrating what he called “a historic moment.” The decision, he said, was never only about cartography. “For too long, inherited cartographic representations have distorted our perception of the true size and place of Africa and other regions of the world. Correcting the map means correcting the way we see the world,” he added.

The United States did not join the measure, describing the initiative as part of a radical ideological project. Still, the resolution does not require a global switch overnight. It does not ban the Mercator projection, and mapmakers can continue using it for navigation where its strengths are relevant. What the vote changes is the expectation that when scale is the message, maps should tell the truth.

For decades, geographers and scholars have argued that maps themselves are political instruments. A projection designed for sailors has quietly influenced how billions of people picture the world, giving pole-based continents extra visual weight while shrinking the landmasses around the equator. That critique now has formal support from the world’s most representative body — a decision supporters say is less about redrawing lines than rethinking assumptions.