Geographical World

🌍 THE WORLD MAP IS CHANGING — BUT WHY?
For centuries, one map projection has dominated classrooms, atlases and our screens: the Mercator Projection.

Now, the world is taking a new look at the map. 🗺️
On 4 September 2026, the United Nations General Assembly endorsed a resolution encouraging the use of the Equal Earth projection and other equal-area maps to represent the relative sizes of continents more accurately.

📊 The vote? 🇺🇳 164 countries — YES
🇺🇸 1 country — NO
6 countries — ABSTAINED

🌍 Why does this matter?
The Mercator projection was designed in 1569, primarily for navigation. It preserves directions and angles well, but it greatly enlarges areas farther from the Equator.
That means places such as Greenland, Europe and northern North America appear much larger relative to Africa and other equatorial regions than they really are.

👉 On a Mercator map, Greenland can appear almost comparable to Africa.

👉 In reality, Africa is about 14 times larger than Greenland! 🌍
The Equal Earth projection, introduced in 2018, is an equal-area projection—meaning continents and countries are shown in their correct relative proportions.

⚠️ But here's the important part: Mercator is NOT becoming useless or disappearing overnight. Its ability to preserve angles and directions still makes it valuable for navigation and certain mapping applications.
The real lesson is:
There is no single “perfect” world map. Every projection involves some form of distortion. The best projection depends on what you want the map to show.

🌍 Perhaps the biggest change isn't the map itself—it's how we see the world.
Africa was never small.
The map made it look smaller.

🗺️ Mercator → Equal Earth
📐 From preserving angles → preserving area
🌍 From familiar appearance → more accurate relative size
What do you think? Should schools around the world start using Equal Earth more widely?
👇 Tell us your opinion in the comments!

Dar es salaam, Tanzania

Mbeya, Tanzania