The African Union’s push for the “right map of Africa” has reopened a centuries-old debate on how the world is visually represented, and whether traditional cartographic practices continue to perpetuate colonial-era hierarchies. The AU has endorsed the “Correct the Map” campaign, which seeks to replace the Mercator projection with fairer alternatives that show countries in their true proportions. For Africa, which spans 30 million square kilometres but often appears visually comparable to a much smaller North America, this is a question of dignity, representation, and global perception.
The Mercator projection, introduced in 1569 by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator, was never meant to be a world atlas. It was a navigation tool, designed to help sailors plot straight-line courses across oceans. To preserve angles for navigation, the map drastically inflated landmasses closer to the poles while compressing those near the equator. As a result, Greenland looks as large as Africa, despite being 14 times smaller. India, too, is misrepresented—visually dwarfed by Greenland and Alaska, though it is larger than both in reality. Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla’s remarks from space earlier this year confirmed this distortion, observing that India appeared “much larger” from orbit than on flat maps.
The persistence of the Mercator map long after its navigational use waned has less to do with practicality and more to do with psychology and power. For centuries, classrooms, atlases, and even digital platforms like Google Maps relied on it. Its widespread use reinforced a Eurocentric worldview, with Europe and North America visually magnified, while equatorial nations—including India, Brazil, and most of Africa—were made to look smaller, subconsciously diminishing their perceived importance. For colonial powers, this distortion was politically convenient, projecting an image of dominance while minimising the vastness of colonised lands.
The African Union has argued that such misrepresentation is not just academic. It influences how countries are perceived in the media, education, and international policy. A child growing up seeing Africa appear smaller than Europe absorbs an implicit hierarchy of significance. Likewise, India’s diminished portrayal contributes to a skewed global sense of its scale and potential. For countries of the Global South, the map is thus not neutral—it is a narrative tool that shapes how the world sees them, and how they see themselves.
Alternatives exist. The Gall-Peters projection, introduced in the 1970s, preserves area but distorts shapes, leaving continents stretched and elongated. More recently, the Equal Earth projection, designed in 2017, has gained traction. It offers a balanced compromise: equal-area representation with more natural continent shapes. Institutions like NASA, National Geographic, and the World Bank have begun adopting it, recognising the need for accuracy in representation. Even Google Maps, once heavily reliant on Mercator, introduced alternatives after 2018.
This movement raises a critical question for India: should it join Africa’s campaign to “correct the map”? As one of the world’s largest countries, both geographically and demographically, India has much to gain from more accurate cartographic representation. Aligning with Africa and other Global South nations would not only counter the colonial legacy embedded in traditional projections but also symbolically reposition these regions in global consciousness.
At the same time, no projection is without flaws. The Earth’s spherical surface makes distortion inevitable on flat maps. The choice is between distortions that aid navigation and distortions that fairly represent territorial size. For Africa, India, and others historically marginalised by skewed cartography, the latter holds profound significance. As Africa leads the charge, India now faces a question not of geography, but of geopolitical identity: will it choose to remain mapped by outdated colonial defaults, or join the movement to redraw the world in proportion to its true scale?
