Africa: Who Mapped Africa? Debunking the Myth That Europeans Alone Plotted the Continent

What the report says

In an analysis republished by AllAfrica from The Conversation Africa, Thomas J. Bassett argues that a long-standing assumption about African cartography needs revision: European-made maps of Africa were not built from European observations alone, but often drew heavily on African knowledge, guides and route-finding traditions. The piece follows renewed attention to map distortion after a September 2026 United Nations resolution backed a projection intended to represent landmasses more fairly, and notes that this broader debate helped prompt questions about how Africa has been represented and underestimated.

Bassett says pre-colonial African mapping practices, including oral directions and drawings in sand or on the ground, were widely used by European explorers, surveyors and military officers. He cites examples from 19th-century West Africa, including French explorer Henri Duveyrier, Louis-Gustave Binger and Jean-Baptiste Marchand, whose maps incorporated locally provided route information. In some cases, African intermediaries helped identify false assumptions, such as the supposed Kong Mountains, and improved European understanding of travel routes and terrain.

The article also explains that blank spaces on colonial maps often reflected restricted access imposed by African rulers rather than simple ignorance. Bassett links these mapping practices to imperial expansion, noting that information gathered from African sources was later used in colonial boundary-making, including at the Berlin Africa Conference of 1884-85. His central point is that many maps once treated as purely European achievements were in fact hybrid products of African and European collaboration, even if African contributors were rarely credited.