For 457 years, the Mercator projection has dominated our classrooms, distorting the world to favor European perspectives while shrinking Africa to the size of an anecdote. Greenland appears as large as Africa, despite the latter being fourteen times larger in reality.
On September 4, 2026, the UN General Assembly adopted the ‘Correct the Map’ resolution, led by Togo on behalf of the African Group, with 164 votes in favor. Only the United States voted against it, labeling the move as ‘ideological.’ This resistance highlights how the distortion of geography has long served to visually inflate industrial powers while diminishing the continents from which they extracted resources.
The resolution does not ban existing maps but encourages the use of more accurate projections in education and media. This is not merely about cartography; it is about perception. Africa holds 30% of global mineral reserves and 60% of the world’s uncultivated arable land, yet it remains undervalued in global capital allocation. The coalition of 54 African states behind this resolution signals a shift: Africa is no longer reacting to external agendas but setting its own.
As Mbolatiana Raveloarimisa notes, Africa is not asking to be enlarged; it has never been small. It is demanding an end to the falsification of its scale. Changing the map may not rewrite history, but it will fundamentally alter how future generations perceive, value, and treat the continent.
Captured & Published at: 2026-09-12 05:38:54 (Madagascar Local Time EAT)
Original Source: https://www.lexpress.mg/2026/09/a-lechelle.html