Keypoints:
- UN backs African map campaign 164–1
- Togo turns attention to schools and tech
- Map debate becomes question of global influence
AFRICA’S campaign to change the way the world is drawn has won an overwhelming vote at the United Nations. The harder part starts now.
The General Assembly’s backing for wider use of the Equal Earth projection gives an African-led campaign unprecedented diplomatic weight. But because the resolution is not binding, its real impact will depend on whether schools, publishers, international institutions and technology companies actually change the maps people see.
That makes Friday’s vote about far more than cartography. It raises a bigger question about who gets to shape the world’s image of Africa — and whether diplomatic success can overturn conventions that have survived for centuries.
Africa wins the vote
The resolution, spearheaded by Togo and backed by African states, passed by 164 votes to one, with six abstentions. The United States was the only country to vote against it.
For Togo’s Foreign Minister Robert Dussey, the argument is as much about fairness as geography.
‘A fair world begins with a fair map,’ he told Reuters ahead of the vote.
The measure encourages greater use of Equal Earth and other equal-area projections when showing the relative size of countries and continents matters.
The problem identified by supporters of the campaign is familiar.
The Mercator projection, created in 1569 and still one of the world’s best-known map designs, enlarges landmasses increasingly as they approach the poles.
It was built for navigation, not as a neutral comparison of the size of continents. Yet generations have grown up seeing Mercator-style maps in classrooms, publications and, later, digital environments.
One of the most striking results is that Greenland can appear comparable in size to Africa, even though Africa is roughly 14 times larger.
That distortion has become the centrepiece of the Correct the Map campaign.
Equal Earth takes a different approach. Introduced in 2018, it preserves the relative area of landmasses while accepting other distortions that are unavoidable when transferring a spherical world onto a flat surface.
The argument, therefore, is not that Mercator is suddenly useless or simply ‘wrong’. It remains valuable for navigation. The question is whether it should remain the familiar image of the entire world when people are comparing geographical size.
The battle moves from paper to screens
This is where Friday’s vote becomes more interesting.
Togo says it plans to change geography materials in its schools before the end of 2026. Dussey has also signalled that the campaign will engage companies involved in mapping, GPS and location technology.
That could prove to be the bigger test.
The maps shaping perceptions today are no longer confined to atlases pinned to classroom walls. People encounter the world through phones, laptops, navigation systems, search platforms, television graphics and countless digital applications.
A UN resolution does not automatically change any of those.
If the campaign is to have lasting impact, African governments and advocacy groups will have to persuade the organisations controlling those platforms that map projection is not merely a technical choice.
That takes the issue into largely unexplored territory.
Who decides what the default map of the world looks like on a screen? How much influence should a centuries-old cartographic convention retain when its original purpose was navigation? And when technology companies choose one representation over another, is that really a purely technical decision?
For Africa, those questions matter because visual familiarity can be powerful. What people repeatedly see eventually begins to look normal.
More than a geography argument
For the organisations behind the campaign, correcting Africa’s scale is ultimately about how the continent is perceived.
Moky Makura, executive director of Africa No Filter, has described Africa’s treatment on conventional world maps as ‘not just a cartographic error — it’s a narrative issue’.
That goes to the political heart of the campaign.
The debate is arriving at a moment when African governments are challenging their place in other global institutions.
Africa has 54 members at the United Nations but no permanent seat on the Security Council. Its leaders have repeatedly called for greater influence in international financial institutions and pushed for reforms covering debt, climate finance, credit ratings and representation.
Seen against that background, the map campaign fits into a wider attempt to question systems inherited from an earlier global order.
Africa Briefing examined the map reform push ahead of the UN vote, when Togo was preparing to move the campaign from African Union backing to the General Assembly.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has similarly warned that international institutions risk losing authority if they fail to reflect contemporary political realities, part of a wider debate over Africa’s demand for meaningful reform of the UN system.
Ghanaian President John Mahama has also argued that Africa should help shape the international order now emerging rather than simply adapt to decisions made elsewhere, an argument reflected in his wider vision for Africa’s place in a changing global order.
The map campaign is clearly different in scale from Security Council reform or restructuring the global financial system. But it comes from a related instinct: longstanding conventions should not escape scrutiny simply because the world has become used to them.
In this case, the convention is something most people barely notice.
A map.
The symbolism carries political weight
There is a temptation to dismiss the campaign as symbolic.
It is symbolic. But that does not make it meaningless.
Maps have always carried political weight. They determine how borders are shown, how territories are named and how people understand distance, scale and proximity.
The African argument is that size also matters.
The continent is not asking to be made larger than it is. It is asking that maps used for global comparison stop making other parts of the world appear disproportionately large beside it.
That demand has now secured support from almost the entire UN membership.
Winning the vote also demonstrates something about African diplomacy.
A campaign that began outside the UN system, backed by organisations including Speak Up Africa and Africa No Filter before gaining African Union support, has been carried by African governments into the General Assembly and turned into a UN-backed international campaign.
That progression may ultimately matter as much as the map itself.
Africa has spent decades demanding reform of international systems whose rules it had little role in writing. Here, African states have successfully placed an issue of their choosing before the world and secured overwhelming backing for it.
Now comes the difficult part
The resolution cannot force a school to replace its maps. It cannot order a publisher to redesign an atlas. And it cannot compel a technology company to change what appears on billions of screens.
Those decisions come next.
Togo has said it intends to begin by changing its own geography books and then encourage other countries to follow. Dussey has also made clear that the campaign will eventually have to reach companies behind mapping, GPS and other location technologies.
That is where symbolic victory meets practical power.
If Equal Earth and other equal-area projections begin appearing routinely in education, international reports and digital products, the UN vote could eventually alter the way another generation visualises the world.
If little changes, Friday’s success will remain largely symbolic.
That is why the most revealing part of this story will unfold after the applause in New York.
Africa has persuaded 164 countries that the way the world is represented matters.
Now it has to persuade the institutions that actually draw it.
