How Big Is Africa? A UN Resolution Calls for a New World Map

Africa contains the Sahara, the world’s largest hot desert, the Congo rainforest, the world’s second-largest rainforest, and Lake Victoria, the world’s third-largest lake. Yet standard world maps often make the continent look far smaller than it really is.

On those maps, Russia appears twice as large as Africa, although the opposite is true. Greenland can look comparable to Africa, despite having only one-fourteenth of its area. It is not even larger than Africa’s biggest country.

A UN General Assembly resolution now seeks to change that familiar picture. The resolution says conventional mapping standards are outdated and calls on schools and technology platforms to use representations that show Africa’s true scale whenever possible.

Togo, a small West African country that appears on maps as a thin strip, sponsored the resolution with backing from the other African Union member states. The AU decided in August 2025 to campaign for a more accurate depiction of Africa. “This is not a political discussion, but one supported by science. We all have to accept reality,” Togo’s Foreign Minister Robert Dussey said in New York.

The distortion dates back almost 500 years to the Flemish geographer Gerardus Mercator. His projection preserved directions and helped 16th-century European sailors navigate the world’s oceans. But it also stretched areas farther from the equator. Africa, much of it near the equator, consequently appears smaller, while northern territories look larger. The Mercator projection remains common in textbooks and Google Maps. Critics argue that the image adds to the marginalization of a continent shaped by colonialism and the slave trade and still described in the article as the world’s poorest.

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This is not a political discussion, but one supported by science. We all have to accept reality.