For over 450 years, we have used a world map that shows a significant distortion of the sizes and relationships between continents. The so-called Mercator map from the 16th century makes Africa look much too small, whereas the regions closer to the poles look too large.
In reality, you could fit the United States, China, India, Japan, Mexico, and much of Europe into Africa and still have land to spare. The Mercator map isn’t just about misrepresenting the size of the global South — it’s also about power and significance.
The African Union supports this campaign and wants to stop what has been called a five-hundred-year-long “disinformation campaign”.
The Correct the Map Campaign urges the world to correct the map by adopting the Equal Earth projection, which more accurately reflects the true size of Africa.
“We find that it’s important to depict the world as truthfully as possible. Maps influence how we look at the world, and it’s about time that we correct the old versions. EfD will now consequently use the Equal Earth Map,” says EfD’s Director Gunnar Köhlin.