OPINIONS & PERSPECTIVES: When Africa Looks Small: The Politics of a Map

There is something profoundly unsettling about discovering that the map, many of us grew up with, has been deceiving our eyes.

Not necessarily lying in its intentions, and certainly not in the sense that the continents themselves are misplaced. Rather, it has been presenting a particular version of the world, one in which Greenland can appear almost as large as Africa, while Africa, the world’s second-largest continent by land area, is visually diminished.

Africa is not small.

Yet for generations, millions of children have looked at maps in classrooms, textbooks, offices, newspapers and digital platforms and absorbed an image in which Africa appears considerably smaller than it actually is.

The reality is extraordinary. Africa covers approximately 30.3 million square kilometres, while Greenland covers about 2.2 million. Africa is therefore roughly 14 times larger. Yet on the familiar Mercator projection, the two can appear deceptively comparable in size.

The reason is mathematical.

The Mercator projection, developed by Gerardus Mercator in 1569, was designed primarily for navigation. It preserves angles and makes plotting constant compass bearings easier but increasingly distorts land area towards the poles. Strictly speaking, therefore, Mercator was not designed to make Africa look small. But that is not where the conversation should end.

The more important question is what happens when a projection designed for a particular technical purpose becomes the dominant visual representation of the world. That is where cartography becomes culture, and geography begins to intersect with psychology, history and power.

A map is not merely a technical object. It is also a way of imagining the world. This is why the United Nations General Assembly’s decision of 4 September 2026 deserves attention.

On that day, the General Assembly adopted resolution A/RES/80/307, “Correct the Map: Rebalancing Global Cartographic Representation and Promoting Equitable Representation of the World’s Regions, Particularly Africa”. The resolution was adopted by 164 votes in favour, one against and six abstentions. It encourages the use of equal-area projections, including Equal Earth, particularly where the relative size of landmasses is important.

This does not ban Mercator, nor does it make Equal Earth compulsory. That distinction matters because there is no single “perfect” map. The Earth is spherical and the page is flat; every projection necessarily involves compromises. Mercator remains useful for navigation because of the characteristics it preserves.

The issue is what happens when a navigation-oriented projection becomes the default mental picture of the world for people who are not navigating ships. The significance of the UN resolution is therefore less about replacing one map with another; than about recognising that how we represent the world influences how we understand it.

And nowhere could that principle be more important than in education. The classroom is where the real change could begin. A child does not look at a classroom map and think about cylindrical projections, angular preservation or cartographic trade-offs. The child simply sees the world.

That visual experience becomes part of the foundation of geographical knowledge. If a learner repeatedly encounters a world in which Africa appears disproportionately small while northern territories are dramatically enlarged, that image can become part of their mental geography. This is where the resolution could have a meaningful impact on curriculum planning.

Geography curricula can distinguish more deliberately between maps designed for navigation and those intended to communicate comparative land area. Textbooks can use equal-area projections when teaching continental scale. Teacher-training programmes can introduce learners to the idea that every map reflects choices about what to preserve and what to distort.

More importantly, geography can become a lesson in critical literacy. Instead of simply asking, “Where is Africa?”, learners can be encouraged to ask: How is Africa represented, by whom, for what purpose and with what consequences? That is a much richer educational question.

It also matters beyond geography.

How Africa is taught, influences how future generations understand its history, resources, population, cultures, economies and place in the global system. If the continent is consistently presented through fragmented maps, simplified narratives and a development lens, learners may inherit an incomplete understanding of its scale and possibilities.

The correction of the map can therefore become an opportunity to correct something larger: the mental geography through which Africa is understood.

From the classroom to the boardroom

This brings us to an often-overlooked dimension of the debate; economics. A map does not determine trade policy. Replacing Mercator with Equal Earth will not build a railway, reduce tariffs or create jobs. But economic relationships are shaped partly by perception.

Before a country becomes an investment destination or trading partner, it must exist within the mental geography of decision-makers. Africa has too often been imagined internationally as a collection of problems rather than as a vast economic space.

Its 54 countries, more than 1.5 billion people, enormous natural resources, growing consumer markets and increasingly integrated continental economy are frequently discussed through fragmented national narratives. The African Continental Free Trade Area offers an important counterpoint. It represents an attempt to deepen economic integration across the continent and create a more connected African market.

The corrected map does not create that market, but it can help us see its scale. This matters because trade is not only about tariffs, ports, supply chains and regulations. It is also about imagination.

What does a multinational corporation see when it looks at Africa? What does an investor see? What does a young African entrepreneur learn to imagine as the economic geography of their own continent?

There is a profound difference between asking, “How can we help Africa develop?” and asking, “How can we build mutually beneficial economic relationships with Africa?”

The first tends to position Africa as a recipient. The second recognises Africa as a partner.

That conceptual shift is essential. Africa should increasingly be understood not simply as an exporter of raw materials or a destination for development programmes, but as a producer, consumer, investor, innovator, technology ecosystem and trading partner. A more accurate map cannot produce that transformation by itself.But representation can help create the intellectual conditions in which different possibilities become easier to see.

Symbolic minimisation

This is where the idea of symbolic minimisation becomes useful. Symbolic minimisation occurs when something is represented in a way that diminishes; not necessarily its physical existence, but its perceived scale, significance or meaning. Africa does not become geographically smaller because of Mercator. But the image of Africa becomes smaller.

And images matter.

For generations, Africa has also been subjected to another form of symbolic minimisation: the reduction of a vast and diverse continent to recurring narratives of poverty, conflict, disease and dependency. Africa is sometimes spoken about as though it were a single country. Its 54 countries are compressed into one political category, its immense cultural diversity flattened, and its economic possibilities often discussed primarily through the language of crisis.

The map debate resonates because it exposes a broader question: who gets to define the frameworks through which the world is seen? That does not mean every framework originating outside Africa is inherently oppressive, nor that Mercator itself should be treated as a colonial conspiracy. Such claims would oversimplify history.

A stronger argument is that representations created for particular purposes can acquire meanings beyond their original intentions. The task, therefore, is not to find a map that is ideologically pure. It is to become more conscious of what maps, and other representations, are doing.

The September 4 resolution is significant, but the vote itself is not the destination. The real question is what happens next. Will education authorities reconsider the maps used in classrooms and textbooks? Will curriculum planners strengthen cartographic literacy?

Will publishers and digital platforms distinguish between projections appropriate for navigation and those appropriate for communicating land area? And will the correction of geographical representation encourage a broader reconsideration of how Africa is represented economically? Because there would be little value in correcting the size of Africa on a classroom wall while continuing to treat the continent as a peripheral economic space in the boardroom. A corrected map should therefore be accompanied by a corrected economic imagination.

Africa does not need a larger map to prove its importance. Its history, geography, people, cultures, economies and civilisations already establish its significance.

What it deserves is accurate representation. Perhaps that is ultimately what the UN resolution asks of the world. Look again. Look at Africa at its true scale. Then ask what else we have been taught to see as smaller than it really is.

Sometimes symbolic minimisation arrives as a sentence. Sometimes it is a photograph. Sometimes it is a curriculum. Sometimes it is an economic narrative. And sometimes, quite literally, it is a map on a classroom wall.

Africa has never been small. Perhaps it is time our maps, and our imaginations, caught up with reality.