The United Nations General Assembly voted 164 to 1, with six abstentions, on September 4, 2026, to adopt the “Correct the Map” resolution, endorsing the Equal Earth projection as the standard map replacing the centuries-old Mercator projection for general use, according to Al Jazeera. The United States cast the sole vote against the resolution.
The Mercator projection, developed in the 16th century, has distorted Africa’s size for roughly 450 years by expanding landmasses closer to the poles. Under Mercator, Greenland appears roughly equal in size to Africa despite being about 14 times smaller, a distortion that has made Western nations appear disproportionately large compared with Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia. The resolution preserves the Mercator projection for maritime and aerial navigation, where its properties remain useful.
African Union member states and the Bahamas sponsored the resolution, with Togo leading the campaign. “A fair world begins with a fair map,” Togo’s foreign minister said. One advocate for the change framed the stakes more broadly: “If we got something as basic as Africa’s size wrong for this long, what else about Africa have we simply accepted without questioning?”
The United States argued the resolution promoted an “ideological agenda” and distracted from more pressing international concerns, according to Al Jazeera. It was the only country among the 171 UN member states that voted on the measure to oppose it outright.
Togo says it aims to update its own school materials with the Equal Earth projection by the end of the year and will push governments, schools, organizations and technology companies worldwide to adopt the new standard. The vote adds to a broader push this year to correct colonial-era distortions in how Africa is represented internationally, from cartography to trade and investment narratives about the continent’s size and economic weight.
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