African Union urges adoption of world map showing continent's true size
Created by cartographer Gerardus Mercator for navigation, the projection distorts continent sizes, enlarging areas near the poles like North America and Greenland while shrinking Africa and South America.
'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 54 nations and over a billion people.
Such stereotypes influence media, education and policy, she said.
Criticism of the Mercator map is not new, but the 'Correct The Map' campaign led by advocacy groups Africa No Filter and Speak Up Africa has revived the debate, urging organisations to adopt the 2018 Equal Earth projection, which tries to reflect countries' true sizes.
'The current size of the map of Africa is wrong,' Moky Makura, executive director of Africa No Filter, said. 'It's the world's longest misinformation and disinformation campaign, and it just simply has to stop.'
Fara Ndiaye, co-founder of Speak Up Africa, said the Mercator affected Africans' identity and pride, especially children who might encounter it early in school. 'We're actively working on promoting a curriculum where the Equal Earth projection will be the main standard across all (African) classrooms,' Ndiaye said, adding she hoped it would also be the one used by global institutions, including Africa-based ones. Haddadi said the AU endorsed the campaign, adding it aligned with its goal of 'reclaiming Africa's rightful place on the global stage' amid growing calls for reparations for colonialism and slavery.
The AU will advocate for wider map adoption and discuss collective actions with member states, Haddadi added. The Mercator projection is still widely used, including by schools and tech companies. Google Maps switched from Mercator on desktop to a 3D globe view in 2018, though users can still switch back to the Mercator if they prefer.
On the mobile app, however, the Mercator projection remains the default.
'Correct The Map' wants organisations like the World Bank and the United Nations to adopt the Equal Earth map. A World Bank spokesperson said they already use the Winkel-Tripel or Equal Earth for static maps and are phasing out Mercator on web maps.
The campaign said it has sent a request to the UN geospatial body, UN-GGIM. A UN spokesperson said that once received it must be reviewed and approved by a committee of experts.
Other regions are backing the AU's efforts. Dorbrene O'Marde, Vice Chair of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Reparations Commission, endorsed Equal Earth as a rejection of Mercator map's 'ideology of power and dominance'.
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Hindustan Times
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Under its colonnades, mayors welcomed presidents, poets, and heads of state. Civic receptions were staged with the gravity of statecraft: symbolic keys to the city exchanged hands, garlands draped over shoulders, abhinandan patra (formal letters of congratulations) read aloud as cameras clicked. For decades, those encounters seemed to live only in fading photographs, and in the memories of dignitaries and officials who were part of these meetings. Then, during a routine record room cleanup last year, a municipal heritage team stumbled upon a piece of history. A battered, leather-bound visitors' book. Its spine cracked, its pages foxed and crumbling, the ledger held in its hand-inked lines the ghost of an era — signatures, messages, and sketches from foreign dignitaries who passed through Delhi from the 1950s to the 1980s. 'It's a treasure,' said a senior official from the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA), which is now restoring the book. 'Every page tells you what the world thought of India in those formative years, and how Delhi presented itself to that world.' The first pages record Soong Ching-ling's flourish in 1955, followed by a neat November 1956 note from Zhou Enlai, China's premier. He wished for the 'peaceful construction' and 'long friendship' of two nations, ending with 'Hindi Chini Bhai Bhai' in carefully brushed Chinese characters — hope inked just years before the 1962 war would shatter it. Two lines down, a royal signature: Haile Selassie, the Ethiopian emperor whose reign bridged the colonial and post-colonial worlds. His 1956 visit was steeped in solidarity. Ethiopia still remembered India's support during Italy's brutal occupation two decades earlier. Selassie came to speak with then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru about African and Asian decolonisation, Delhi at that moment being the nerve centre of what is now known as the Global South. 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The Print
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More than 400 million tonnes of plastic are produced globally each year, half of which is for single-use 15 percent of plastic waste is collected for recycling, only nine percent is actually half, or 46 percent, ends up in landfills, while 17 percent is incinerated and 22 percent is mismanaged and becomes litter. The plastic pollution problem is so ubiquitous that microplastics have been found on the highest mountain peaks, in the deepest ocean trench and scattered throughout almost every part of the human body. On current trends, annual production of fossil-fuel-based plastics will nearly triple by 2060 to 1.2 billion tonnes, while waste will exceed one billion tonnes, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.
