US Votes Against UN-Endorsed New World Map To Correct Africa’s Size

The United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly on Friday, September 4, to endorse a new map of Africa, intended to correct centuries of cartographic “creativity.” 

The UN resolution, sponsored by Togo and backed by the 55-member African Union, passed with 164 member states in favor. The only country to cast a vote against the measure was the United States, and six other countries — Serbia, Estonia, Georgia, Lithuania, Moldova, and Ukraine — abstained. 

The traditional Mercator map, designed by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator, has been the default since the 16th century. That map is to now make way for the Equal Earth projection, which geographers say portrays landmasses more accurately. Under the old map, Africa and Greenland appear similarly sized, though Africa is actually about 14 times larger. 

The resolution doesn’t outlaw Mercator or mandate a replacement—it just encourages the switch, and yet, the U.S. couldn’t abide it. 

Togo’s Foreign Minister, Robert Dussey, who led the effort on behalf of the African contingent, framed the change as a matter of perception rather than politics, telling delegates before the vote that maps shape education and collective understanding of the world. 

According to CBS News, Africa No Filter, which led campaigns to adopt the new map, made its reasoning clear: “We want to see accurate maps in schools, textbooks, newsrooms, businesses and on the digital platforms billions of people use every day.”

The UN’s own reporting described the campaign as part of a broader argument tying the Mercator projection’s distortions to a “symbolic minimization” of Africa, with the resolution characterizing the correction as an act of “cognitive justice and memorial reparation.”

And that, apparently, is exactly what the U.S. objected to. The American representative, Yaryna Ferencevych, the deputy U.S. representative to the U.N. Economic and Social Council, argued the resolution went beyond fixing map proportions, calling it part of a “radical ideological project” and criticizing its references to reparations (prolly the real objection) and “cognitive justice” as undermining the UN’s credibility.

Meanwhile, France — the country whose former colonies still make up much of Africa— announced that it is abandoning Mercator entirely. By the way, Fance and the US would be a bit smaller in the new Equal Earth map, according to UN News.

And for those questioning why a spate of Eastern European countries abstained, the Kyiv Post reports that Ukraine, while sympathetic to the broader goal of accuracy, warned that adopting Equal Earth without safeguards could create ambiguity over Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory depicted on some versions of the map. For instance, one version depicted temporarily occupied Crimea as separate from the rest of the country. 

So to recap: the United States is apparently the only country in the world which wants to continue to lie about the size of an entire continent, because it goes back to the 16th century, but its president wants to change “Lake Ontario” to “Lake America” and the “Gulf of Mexio” to the “Gulf of America” when they were also named in the 16th Century. 

Make it make sense. 

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