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On the Mercator projection, one of many world’s hottest maps, Greenland and Africa seem like about the identical dimension. However on the Equal Earth projection displaying continents of their true proportions, 14 Greenlands would simply match contained in the African continent.
Criticism that the Mercator projection doesn’t precisely mirror Africa’s actual dimension isn’t new.
Nonetheless, a latest marketing campaign by African advocacy teams is gaining momentum on-line because it urges organizations and colleges to undertake the Equal Earth projection, which they are saying extra precisely shows the scale of the continent of greater than 1.4 billion individuals.
The African Union, the continent’s diplomatic group with 55 member nations, endorsed the marketing campaign final week in what advocates name a serious milestone.
Here’s what to know in regards to the effort to indicate Africa’s actual dimension to the world.
Africa seems too small on most trendy maps.
The Mercator map was created within the sixteenth century by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator. Designed to assist European navigators at sea, the map distorted landmasses by enlarging areas close to the poles reminiscent of North America and Greenland whereas shrinking Africa and South America.
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The 2018 Equal Earth projection is a contemporary map that follows the Earth’s curvature and exhibits continents of their true proportions, not like the distorted Mercator map.
The Mercator projection remains to be widespread in school rooms and tech platforms. Google Maps dropped the extensively used projection for a 3D globe when seen on a desktop browser in 2018, however customers can swap again to the outdated map. The cellular app nonetheless defaults to the Mercator projection.
Teams marketing campaign to interchange the worldwide map
Two African advocacy teams, Africa No Filter and Converse Up Africa, launched a marketing campaign in April to push colleges, adopted by worldwide organizations and media shops, to make use of the Equal Earth projection, which it says extra precisely displays the true dimension of Africa.
“Correcting the map isn’t solely an African difficulty. It’s a matter of fact and accuracy that considerations all the world. When complete generations, in Africa and elsewhere, study from a distorted map, they develop a biased view of Africa’s function on this planet,” mentioned Fara Ndiaye, co-founder and deputy govt director of Converse Up Africa.
For non-Africans, a shrunken illustration of Africa minimizes its demographic, financial and strategic significance, Ndiaye added.
The African Union endorsed the marketing campaign on Aug. 14, the most important physique to signal on to the marketing campaign to date, marking a big milestone for the “Appropriate The Map” marketing campaign.
Geographers say the Mercator projection is outdated.
Mark Monmonier, a Syracuse College professor of geography, mentioned the Mercator projection is out of date and geographers have lengthy suggested individuals to not use it as a world map.
“It was a helpful navigation instrument within the sixteenth century, as a result of it has straight traces, giving navigators a line of fixed path to sail alongside,” Monmonier mentioned. “However exterior of that very slim navigation utility, there isn’t a level in utilizing it.”
Whereas maps following the curvature of the earth, just like the Equal Earth projection, supply a extra correct scale of the true sizes of the continents, he nonetheless warned that bar graphs stay one of the best ways to match the sizes of various continents.
“Whenever you put irregularly formed areas on a flat paper, individuals are going to have a tough time precisely evaluating the scale of landmasses,” Monmonier mentioned.
© 2025 The Canadian Press
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