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Mapping Africa’s future

The African Union is pushing for wholesale rejection of the misleading Mercator map in favour of a new Equal Earth projection

The African Union (AU) is urging the international community to ditch the 16th century Mercator map by endorsing the Equal Earth Wall Map which bills itself as ‘showing countries and continents at their true sizes relative to each other’.

Drawn up by the Flemish geographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569, the map has been the world standard despite significantly underestimating the size of Africa and Australia. The map depicts Greenland as being of roughly equivalent size to Africa even though the latter is 14 times larger. Madagascar is also too small.

The Mercator map was drawn up primarily for marine navigation but is still widely used on the Internet and by schools for teaching purposes, including across many African countries. The Equal Earth Wall Map was launched in 2018 and a series of advocacy groups want it to be the standard reference for schools.

‘It might seem to be just a map, but in reality, it is not,’ AU Commission Deputy Chairperson Selma Malika Haddadi told Reuters. She added that the Mercator map fostered a false impression that Africa was ‘marginal’, despite being the world's second-largest continent by area.

The campaign, which Haddadi says is part of ‘reclaiming Africa's rightful place on the global stage’, has also been backed by Dorbrene O'Marde, Vice-Chair of the Caribbean Community Reparations Commission. O’Marde described the Equal Earth project as a rejection of the Mercator map's ‘ideology of power and dominance’.

The AU says that it will promote use of the Equal Earth map among multilateral organisations such as the United Nations and World Bank, though the latter has stated that it is already phasing out use of the Mercator map.

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