A United Nations General Assembly resolution has endorsed greater use of the Equal Earth projection, a map designed to represent the relative sizes of continents more accurately.
The resolution was sponsored by Togo and backed by African countries. 164 countries voted in favour, while the United States voted against and six countries abstained.
The issue may appear technical.
It is not.
Traditional Mercator maps visually enlarge areas closer to the poles while shrinking equatorial regions.
As a result, Africa has often appeared much smaller than its actual landmass.
Why this matters culturally
Maps influence how people imagine the world.
For decades, generations of students have grown up looking at representations that distort relative size.
The Equal Earth projection gives Africa a visual scale much closer to reality.
Culture Take: Correcting a map cannot correct history by itself—but representation matters.
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