UN Backs Correct The Map Resolution With Zambia Among All 54 African Sponsors

The United Nations General Assembly has adopted the Correct the Map resolution with overwhelming support, co-sponsored by all 54 African Union member states, Zambia among them.

The Togo-led initiative, backed by the African Union, addresses a distortion that has shaped how the world pictures Africa for centuries. The resolution recognises that the Mercator projection, still the most widely used map of the world, exaggerates land masses far from the equator and shrinks those near it. The result is familiar to anyone who has looked at a classroom wall. Africa appears roughly the same size as Greenland. In reality it is around 14 times larger.

Zambia's Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Dr Chola Milambo, welcomed the adoption as a historic moment for Africa and for other regions the projection has diminished.

He said the continent had gone centuries without being depicted at its true scale, and that correcting the record matters for how Africa is understood by those who have only ever seen it drawn small.

The resolution encourages governments, schools and international institutions to adopt the Equal Earth projection, published in 2018, which represents continental areas in their correct proportions.

It is non-binding. Its influence will be measured instead in textbooks, atlases and the digital mapping platforms that most people now use daily, and in how quickly education ministries and publishers choose to act on it.