A man looks at a map of the world in Lisbon, Portugal
[File: Armando Franca/AP]
Commonly used projections shrink the size of Africa, but experts have long debated whether creating a precise map is possible.
When Abimbola Ogundairo saw a pretty wooden map she thought would be great decor for her walls, she did something most regular buyers wouldn’t think of: She messaged the manufacturers with a simple, yet charged question.
“Which map projection did you use?” she asked, referring to the method of representing maps on a flat plane.
The sellers never responded, but Ogundairo suspected they used a problematic projection.
Discouraged, she refused to place an order.
Ogundairo’s obsession with map projections is not random.
The 28-year-old is leading an African-led campaign to get more of global institutions and schools to immediately stop using the Mercator Map projection – the most common version of the world map that is generally recognised – because it shrinks Africa, and much of the Global South, while disproportionately enlarging the rich and powerful regions of the world.
Greenland, for example, is shown to be relatively the same size as Africa, but, in reality, can fit in the continent 14 times over.
Europe, portrayed as bigger than South America, is actually half its size.
Advocates like Ogundairo are pushing instead for “equal area” map projections, which they say more accurately represent the prominence of the African continent.
Since early May, Ogundairo, as lead campaigner at Africa No Filter, a nonprofit working to change negative perceptions of Africa, has hassled big institutions like the United Nations with a “Correct the World” campaign.
People are encouraged to sign an online petition to pressure their governments into compliance.
Most people, Ogundairo said, don’t know about the distortions and react with surprise and outrage.
“We’ve had a lot of, ‘Oh my God, I didn’t even know this was happening,’” Ogundairo told Al Jazeera.
“I have an uncle who decided to support this because I told him you can fit the US, China, and India into Africa, and he felt so betrayed. He was like ‘Oh my God, I had no idea.’”
Institutions have been harder to crack, Ogundairo said, but she expected some resistance to this sensitive, controversial topic.
For centuries, experts have debated the question: Can anyone accurately depict a three-dimensional, spherical world on a flat surface?
Is it possible to take a rounded object, like a football, for example, cut it up, paste it on a board, and have a precise representation?
Many experts conclude the answer is a resounding no.
Maps, they say, are inherently a lie, always compromising on something: Area, distance, or something else.
Others, though, argue that near-perfect maps exist and must be highlighted.
Ogundairo believes the commonly used Mercator map affects Africa and Africans negatively, and that its widespread use for centuries is connected to the many decades of
colonialism the continent endured.
Now, she said, some 70 years after independence from colonial masters, is the time to press for change.
“We live in a world where size is often equated with power,” Ogundairo said, adding that the Mercator map feeds tropes that Africa is a country.
“It has a damaging impact on the way we make decisions in our everyday lives, on how we make business decisions, the way we dream, and even the way non-Africans view the continent as a tourist destination and an investment destination.
It’s the most lingering lie about Africa,” she said.
A heated, centuries-long debate resurfaces Cartographers as far back as the early 20th century knew the Mercator projection was problematic.
Developed by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1599, the projection was one of the first ever to represent arched, imaginary sailing courses as visible, straight lines.
Its simplicity for sea navigation cemented its popularity at the time, but its huge errors soon became hard to ignore.
“It preserves shapes and angles, and that’s good for navigation, but it’s terrible for scale,” geography professor Lindsay Frederick Braun of the University of Oregon said of the Mercator map.
The map is most suitable for local area mapping and is used by digital platforms like Google Maps.
When enlarged into a world map, though, Mercator becomes problematic, Braun said.
The map’s mistakes were not likely to be a conspiracy against Africa or the Global South, but its continued use, he added, is inherently political.
“Part of the reason Mercator got wide use is because it was widely available for nautical charts, but also because it rings true as a vision of the world to the people who were looking at it, the people whose countries are a little bigger.”
Several map projections over time have tried to fill Mercator’s gaps, but all of them compromise on one or more factors.
That has made it hard for social justice crusaders looking to support a projection that better represents the Global South.
The Mercator projection is the most commonly used map
[File: Stephane Mahe/Reuters]
One cartographer’s claims, though, shook the cartography world in 1973, causing an outpouring of condemnation on the one hand, and on the other, a loyal cult following.
German activist Arno Peters declared his Peters Projection as the “only” precise map, and the true alternative to the Mercator model.
Peters, whose parents had been imprisoned by Nazis and who focused on social inequalities as a journalist and academic criticised the Mercator projection as “Euro-centred”.
The fervour with which he and his supporters promoted the projection as a scientific feat and a social justice breakthrough bordered on what some called propaganda.
It caused concerned groups like the United States National Council of Churches to take notice and immediately adopt the map.
Critics, though, were quick to call out Peters on two things.
The map, observers pointed out, was only distorted differently: Where the Mercator projection makes areas near the poles appear much larger, the Peters projection relatively represents accurate sizes throughout, but slightly stretches areas near the equator vertically, and areas near the poles horizontally.
“There was also the fact that this map had already been presented by another cartographer decades ago,” Braun said, explaining the second problem.
Scottish scientist James Gall indeed first published an identical projection in a science journal in 1855, but it went unnoticed.
There is no proof, some researchers say, that Peters outrightly plagiarised Gall, but critics say his failure to credit the earlier researcher is still problematic.
In 2016, the debate resurfaced with renewed vigour after public schools in the US city of Boston switched to what many now refer to as the “Gall-Peters” projection.
Officials said the move was part of a three-year effort to “decolonise the curriculum”.
Teachers said they were amazed to see students questioning their view of the world after the switch.
However, many experts and map enthusiasts were annoyed by the fact that Boston chose Peters, and as such, gave the projection renewed relevance.
A perfect map? Amid the Boston schools’ drama, one group of researchers decided they’d had enough of Peters and set out to do something.
Cartographer Bernard Jenny, who teaches immersive visualisation at Australia’s Monash University, said he was approached by Tom Patterson, a retired cartographer with the UN National Parks, for the task.
Together with software engineer Bojan Savric, the team in 2018 created an equal area map they called the “Equal Earth” projection.
That version, which sees Africa expand impressively, is increasingly seen as the closest thing to a perfect area map.
It’s the same one Ogundairo’s team is pushing for.
“But that’s maybe a slightly pretentious name,” Jenny laughed over a Zoom call, explaining that Equal Earth is still not a perfect representation of the Earth.
“We were just tired of the Peters resurgence and wondered why people would go with that when it’s not even the best in terms of anything,” he said.
The new projection tries to correct the Robinson projection, created in 1963 by American Arthur H Robinson.
Many scientists use Robinson’s map because it is more visually balanced, although it compromises on area, size and scale, and particularly enlarges areas close to the north and south poles.
“We tried to come up with a version of Robinson that does not distort area,” Jenny explained.
“So we stretched it in a way such that the different areas are not enlarged or shrunken.
So Greenland is 14 times smaller than Africa on the globe, and it’s also 14 times smaller on the Equal Earth map.”
Jenny said the team never set out specifically to correct some of the most highlighted errors of the Mercator projection.
Subconsciously, though, he said, they knew they wanted their map to better represent historically distorted regions like Africa.
“I would guess any reasonable geographer would support that idea,” the scientist said.
Equal Earth rose in popularity after a NASA scientist saw it online right after it was published, and the organisation immediately switched to it.
The World Bank, too, has picked it up.
The institution, since 2013, has experimented with different projections, including the Robinson map, but in 2024 settled on the Equal Earth map.
“The World Bank Group is committed to ensuring accurate representation of all people, on all platforms,” a spokesperson told Al Jazeera.
Progress is slow but steady, Ogundairo of Africa No Filter said.
Prominent organisations changing their stances means a universal pivot is possible, she said.
Yet, there’s much more work to be done by Africans, she added.
Just as Mercator painted an image that prominently represented his part of the world, Africans, too, need to lead the way in pushing for what they want, Ogundairo said.
One missing factor is that Africans have not insisted enough on change, in her view.
It’s why her campaign is also urging African countries and the African Union to be particular about how they are represented on the map.
“It’s always going to start with us,” Ogundairo said.
“Unless you learn to tell your story, someone else will tell it for you.
We need to say, regardless of why they choose to do whatever it is they did, we see the truth.
This is the story we want to tell now.
This is how we want to show up visually on a map.”
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