The most commonly used world map could soon get a revamp to show the true scale of the African continent.
The African Union (AU) represents 55 countries on the continent, and is backing a new campaign to change the famous 16th-century Mercator map, which they say doesn’t show the size of Africa correctly.
Areas like South America and Africa are skewed slightly on the map, which they claim undermines the importance of the continent while giving America and Europe a larger map.
The most commonly used map, the Mercator, dates back to the 1500s, but changing the size of the map is more difficult than it appears.
The Mercator Projection, created by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569, shows the northern hemisphere enlarged in size with North America and Europe larger than South America and Africa.
But Nick Millea, a map curator at Oxford’s Bodleian Libraries, told The Telegraph: ’It’s the age-old problem of trying to project a spherical object onto a flat surface: you can’t do it.
‘Something has got to give to come up with an image.’
AU Commission deputy chairperson Selma Malika Haddadi told Reuters it’s not just a map.
She said a new map would help ‘reclaim Africa’s rightful place on the global stage’, adding that the skewed size influences education and policy.
The new initiative, dubbed ‘Correct the Map’, hopes the latest 2018 ‘Equal Earth’ map could be used as an alternative to the Mercator map.
‘In a world where size is often equated with power, misrepresenting Africa’s true scale reinforces harmful misconceptions about its geopolitical and economic significance,’ Correct the Map said.
‘You could fit the United States, China, India, Japan, Mexico and much of Europe into Africa and still have land to spare.
‘Yet, most of the world continues to favour this distorted map, misrepresenting Africa’s scale and diminishing its significance.’
The group has already submitted a request to change the map to the UN geospatial body, known as the UN-GGIM. The application will be reviewed and has to be approved by a committee of wide-ranging experts on the matter.
The true size of Africa is indeed skewed slightly on modern maps – corrected versions show that the continent is much larger than it appears.
China, the United States, India and all of continental Europe fit inside of the African continent.
The ‘Equal Earth’ map, which was first unveiled in 2018, was designed to represent the relative sizes of the different land areas without sacrificing a ‘visually pleasing and balanced’ aesthetic.
‘It’s astonishing to me (though not having given it much thought frankly), that we are still designing new global map projections,’ climate scientist Gavin Schmidt of NASA’s Goddard Space Institute said at the time.
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