Overview

• The African Union has endorsed the Correct the Map campaign, urging a shift from the Mercator projection to the Equal Earth map introduced in 2018.
• Supporters argue Mercator inflates high-latitude regions and shrinks equatorial areas, with Greenland appearing comparable to Africa despite Africa being about 14 times larger.
• A petition pressing institutions such as the United Nations and the BBC to adopt Equal Earth had nearly 7,000 signatures as of this week.
• Africa No Filter and Speak Up Africa frame the change as both a technical fix and a representational reset, calling Mercator’s dominance a source of misinformation about Africa.
• Adoption faces hurdles across tech and education, as Google Maps’ mobile app still uses Mercator and there is no single authority over global map standards, prompting campaigns to update school curricula in Africa.