Wed, May 27, 2026 page7

• Cartographic justice for Africa

  For centuries, the Mercator map has distorted Africa’s apparent size, shaping perceptions of the continent’s strategic significance and economic prospects

  • By Carlos Lopes and Selma Malika Haddadi
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  Maps are never neutral. They are instruments of knowledge, yes, but also of power, ideology and often manipulation.

  Nowhere is this more evident than in the depiction of Africa. For centuries, the Mercator projection — still ubiquitous in classrooms, media and digital platforms — has misrepresented Africa’s true scale, making one of the world’s largest landmasses appear deceptively small.

  At more than 30 million square kilometers, Africa is larger than the US, China, India and much of Europe combined. Yet on most maps, it appears comparable in size to Greenland, a landmass that is 14 times smaller. Far from a harmless visual inconsistency, that distortion has long shaped narratives about Africa’s significance, resources and potential.

  

  Illustration: Mountain People

  A global initiative, Correct the Map, seeks to address this imbalance, not merely by adjusting cartographic conventions, but by challenging the deeper distortions that shape how the world sees Africa, and how Africa sees itself.

  The Mercator projection, developed by the Flemish geographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569, was designed for maritime navigation, but distorts scale, especially farther from the equator. In an age of satellite imagery, advanced geospatial technologies and digital mapping, we are no longer constrained by the technical limitations that once justified such compromises. As academics have observed, we are approaching a “digital inflection point” at which accuracy is no longer optional.

  However, this is not only a scientific issue; it is also a political one. Perception shapes policy, and a continent repeatedly represented as smaller than it truly is risks appearing less significant economically, strategically and culturally, with far-reaching implications for investment decisions, international negotiations and global governance.

  Younger generations across Africa already recognize that the continent, home to more than 1.4 billion people and some of the world’s fastest-growing economies, cannot afford to be visually minimized. Less encumbered by inherited colonial frameworks and more comfortable navigating multiple cultural and intellectual registers, they are driving a shift toward an Africa that is neither insular nor reactive, but increasingly self-defined.

  Against this backdrop, the African Union’s decision last year to endorse the Correct the Map was a watershed moment, reflecting a collective recognition that representation matters — not merely as a symbolic gesture, but as a question of fairness. By advocating the adoption of maps that reflect Africa’s true size within international institutions, including the UN, African leaders are asserting a simple yet powerful principle: representation should be grounded in reality.

  A clearer understanding of Africa’s real scale would transform how the world— investors, policymakers and global partners — views its economic geography and infrastructure. When the continent is visually compressed, so too are perceptions of its reach, connectivity and strategic importance.

  Trade is a case in point. From the Suez Canal to the strategic passages around the Cape of Good Hope, the continent is connected to some of the world’s most important maritime corridors. Its coastline stretches more than 30,000km, supporting fisheries, maritime transport, offshore energy and critical ecosystems that together form what is arguably the planet’s largest and least-developed blue economy. Beneath these waters lies another largely invisible, but essential form of infrastructure: a dense network of submarine cables underpinning much of the global digital economy.

  There is also a cultural dimension to the Correct the Map initiative. For generations, educational systems around the world have reproduced inaccurate geographic representations of Africa. Correcting these distortions is an investment in ensuring that future generations — whether in Accra, Amsterdam or Seoul — grow up with a more accurate mental map of the world they inhabit.

  To be sure, all maps involve some degree of distortion. No flat representation of a spherical Earth can ever be perfect, but that is no justification for inaction. Rather, it is a reason to make more responsible choices. When better alternatives exist, it becomes difficult to justify retaining models that systematically misrepresent entire regions.

  The momentum behind Correct the Map reflects a broader global shift. In an interconnected world in which information moves rapidly and decisions are increasingly data-driven, there is little tolerance for inherited inaccuracies. The aim is not to rewrite history, but to update the tools through which we understand the present.

  At its core, the campaign is also about dignity. Africa’s story has repeatedly been told from a perspective that diminished the continent’s scale and Africans’ agency. Correcting the map would be an important first step toward engaging with the continent on its own terms.

  Governments, international organizations, educational institutions and technology companies must work together to adopt more accurate map projections. This is neither technically complex nor prohibitively expensive, yet the consequences of such a change could be profound.

  Maps, after all, are never just representations of space. They also reflect how we see one another and should thus reflect the world as it truly is. Africa does not need to be enlarged. It needs, at long last, to be seen.

  Carlos Lopes is a professor at the University of Cape Town’s Nelson Mandela School of Public Governance. Selma Malika Haddadi is deputy chairperson of the African Union Commission.

  Copyright: Project Syndicate
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