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‘Correct The Map': AU Denounces Cartographic Imperialism in Global Fight for Africa's Spatial Justice
Marrakech – For centuries, Africa has been systematically erased through the hegemonic Western cartographic gaze, its territorial vastness deliberately diminished on world maps that perpetuate neocolonial hierarchies and Eurocentric epistemological violence.
This geographic subjugation – an insidious form of representational colonization – is finally facing a formidable continental resistance.
A newfound quest for dismantling the subtle visual reproduction of Western superiority
The African Union (AU) has forcefully thrown its diplomatic weight behind the 'Correct The Map' campaign, a radical decolonial intervention challenging the 16th-century Mercator projection that has methodically misrepresented the continent for over four centuries under the false pretense of scientific neutrality and cartographic objectivity.
This map – an artifact of European imperial expansion created by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569 – grotesquely hyperinflates regions near the poles like North America and Greenland while severely diminishing Africa and other equatorial territories.
The result has been the embedding of these geographical falsifications deep within the global collective consciousness through educational indoctrination, media narratives, and policy frameworks that reproduce Western supremacy.
The distortion transcends mere technical manipulation to function as ideological warfare on spatial representation. With its 30.3 million square kilometers, Africa is large enough to fit Greenland fourteen times over.
Yet the visually offensive projection masquerading as the world map perniciously suggests that Greenland, despite being of merely 2.16 million square kilometers, is nearly as large as the African continent.
This visual erasure reinforces a pernicious narrative of Africa as 'marginal' despite it being the world's second-largest continent with 54 sovereign nations and over one billion people systematically rendered smaller on the world stage.
'It might seem to be just a map, but in reality, it is not,' declared AU Commission Deputy Chairperson Selma Malika Haddadi, articulating how these cartographic misrepresentations have reinforced asymmetrical power relations since the triangular trade era when the Mercator projection facilitated European maritime hegemony, colonial dispossession, and territorial annexation.
The 'Correct The Map' campaign is spearheaded by pan-African advocacy collectives Africa No Filter and Speak Up Africa. It demands that institutions immediately dismantle this cartographic apparatus of dominance and adopt the 2018 Equal Earth projection, which accurately represents landmasses' true proportions without the Eurocentric distortions that have privileged Western geopolitical narratives and ontological frameworks.
'The current size of the map of Africa is wrong,' asserted Moky Makura, executive director of Africa No Filter with uncompromising clarity. 'It's the world's longest misinformation and disinformation campaign, and it just simply has to stop.'
Africa reclaims spatial dignity through cartographic decolonization
This cartographic injustice has been institutionalized in classrooms, media representations, and transnational organizations worldwide, normalizing a vision of Africa as spatially insignificant – a visual rhetoric supporting centuries of resource extraction and political marginalization.
Fara Ndiaye, co-founder of Speak Up Africa, stressed the profound psychological and cultural violence this misrepresentation inflicts on African identity formation and self-determination. 'We're actively working on promoting a curriculum where the Equal Earth projection will be the main standard across all African classrooms,' she said.
This educational intervention seeks to decolonize geographic knowledge, dismantle internalized spatial hierarchies, and restore cartographic justice to Africa's representation in the global imaginary.
The AU's unequivocal endorsement signals a continental rejection of geographic imperialism at the highest diplomatic level. Haddadi strategically positioned this support within broader anti-colonial struggles, explicitly stating it aligns with the AU's mission of 'reclaiming Africa's rightful place on the global stage' amid intensifying demands for comprehensive reparations addressing the historical injustices of colonialism, slavery, and continued economic exploitation through unequal exchange.
Despite decades of postcolonial critique, the Mercator projection remains deeply entrenched in educational systems and digital platforms worldwide. Google Maps belatedly adopted a 3D globe view on desktop in 2018, yet continues to default to the distorted Mercator projection on mobile applications used by billions daily, perpetuating this geographic misinformation and cognitive imperialism across generations of users.
The campaign is now directly confronting major international bodies like the World Bank and United Nations, demanding they abandon these cartographic tools of subordination. While the World Bank claims to be gradually phasing out Mercator on web maps in favor of Equal Earth or Winkel-Tripel projections, implementation remains insufficient and inconsistent across their platforms and publications.
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A request has been sent to the UN geospatial body, which a UN spokesperson said must be reviewed and approved by a committee of experts once received.
This spatial revolution has garnered crucial solidarity beyond Africa's borders. Dorbrene O'Marde, Vice Chair of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Reparations Commission, has forcefully endorsed Equal Earth as an essential rejection of the Mercator map's embedded 'ideology of power and dominance' that has distorted global spatial consciousness for over four centuries, linking this cartographic struggle to broader movements for historical justice across the Global South.
The AU is now pledging to aggressively advocate for the immediate and widespread adoption of the Equal Earth projection among its member states and coordinate strategic collective actions to dismantle this persistent legacy of cartographic colonialism.
In doing so, the continental body seeks to challenge not just how the world perceives Africa, but how Africa perceives itself after generations of deliberate geographic diminishment and spatial disenfranchisement at the hands of Western mapmakers.
This continental mobilization against cartographic misrepresentation stands as a crucial front in the ongoing struggle against epistemological imperialism and the decolonization of knowledge production systems that continue to center Western perspectives while marginalizing African spatial realities and territorial sovereignty. Tags: African mapAfrican Union (AU)
