The African Union, an intergovernmental organization of 55 African countries, endorsed a version of the world map that more accurately reflects the continent’s scale earlier this month, as first reported by Reuters.The union said it would back the Correct the Map campaign to pressure governments and global organizations to phase out the widely used Mercator map in favor of the Equal Earth projection first proposed in 2018. The former distorts the Earth’s poles, making landmasses like Greenland and Antarctica appear disproportionately large. Advocates for the change argue that the map misrepresents and diminishes the world’s perception of the African continent. The Equal Earth map, on the other hand, enlarges the continent to more accurately reflect its relative size.First devised in 1569 by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator, the ubiquitous Mercator projection features longitude lines that are equally spaced vertically across the globe. Latitude lines, however, are unevenly spaced, with the gaps between them growing wider the further out they are from the equator. This scaling creates a distorted, stretched-out effect at the top and bottom of the Earth. As a result, Greenland appears about equal in size to the entire African continent, when in reality the latter is about 14 times larger, according to some estimates.Screenshot of the Google Maps app, which uses the Mercator projection on its mobile app (screenshot Lisa Yin Zhang/Hyperallergic)“The current size of the map of Africa is wrong,” Moky Makura, executive director of the nonprofit organization Africa No Filter, told Reuters in an interview about the Mercator map projection. “It’s the world’s longest misinformation and disinformation campaign, and it just simply has to stop.”In the Equal Earth map projection, continents appear to more closely match their real relative sizes. Unlike the Mercator map, in which latitude and longitude lines meet at 90-degree angles, its lines are curved to reflect the earth’s spherical shape, leading to a more accurate portrayal of the African continent’s scale. Some technology companies allow users to switch between map projections, but the Mercator remains the default on many services. A Google spokesperson told Hyperallergic that users can choose between it and globe views of the Earth on its desktop Google Maps interface. The Google Maps mobile app, however, uses the Mercator map, according to Reuters.The Correct the Map campaign launched a petition calling for the United Nations and the British Broadcasting Company (BCC) to adopt the Equal Earth map, encouraging other organizations to follow suit. The petition had garnered nearly 7,000 signatures as of the time of publication.“This distortion isn’t just a cartographic error — it’s a narrative failure,” Correct the Map’s petition text reads. “In a world where size is often equated with power, misrepresenting Africa’s true scale reinforces harmful misconceptions about its geopolitical and economic significance.”