U.N. to Vote on African Proposal for a New World Map

What the report says

The United Nations is set to consider an African-backed proposal that would encourage wider use of a new world map projection, according to The New York Times World. The issue centers on how the world is depicted in maps used by governments, schools and international organizations, and on whether long-standard projections should be updated to better reflect the relative size of continents.

The Times says the Equal Earth projection is designed to show countries and regions in more accurate proportion to one another than the older Mercator projection. Critics of Mercator argue that it makes Africa appear smaller than it really is, reinforcing misleading impressions about the continent’s scale and global significance.

The proposal reflects a broader effort by African advocates to challenge map conventions that have been used for centuries. While the article snippet does not give the full text of the resolution or the vote’s expected outcome, the debate matters because map projections can shape how people understand geography, power and representation.

More broadly, cartographers note that no flat map can preserve every geographic feature perfectly; different projections trade off accuracy in shape, size or distance. In that context, the U.N. discussion is part of a long-running conversation about whether official institutions should move away from the Mercator map in favor of alternatives such as Equal Earth.