African nations want world maps adjusted to better highlight their 3rd-world hellholes
Posted: Thu Aug 28, 2025 6:05 pm
- africa maps.jpeg (128.94 KiB) Viewed 146 times
AFRICA - African nations are demanding that the 'distorted' world map be redrawn to show the true scale of the continent that they argue has been misrepresented for centuries.
The African Union (AU) has backed a campaign to end the use by governments and international organisations of the 16th-century Mercator map of the world, in favour of one that more accurately displays Africa's size.
The 55-nation bloc has accused the map of skewing continent sizes, enlarging areas near the poles like North America and Greenland while shrinking Africa and South America.
They argue the distortion leads to an underplaying of the size and importance of Africa, while disproportionally accentuating the scale of America and Europe to make them look larger than they are.
The Mercator projection, one of the world's most common maps, was created by the Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator for navigation in 1569.
It makes Africa look relatively small as it increases the size of countries further from the equator. This means Greenland looks almost the same size as Africa, when in reality the continent is 14 times larger.
'It might seem to be just a map, but in reality, it is not,' AU Commission deputy chairperson Selma Malika Haddadi told Reuters, saying the Mercator fostered a false impression that Africa was 'marginal', despite being the world's second-largest continent by area, with over a billion people.
Such stereotypes influence media, education and policy, she said. The campaigners argue that Africa's diminished scale on the map breeds harmful misconceptions about its geopolitical and economic significance.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... scale.html