African advocacy organizations have initiated a paradigm shift by initiating a resulting campaign to replace the twisted Mercator map that distorts the African continent by 14 times to be replaced by the Equal Earth projection, which displays the massive size of the continent. The historicity of the African Union in signing this Correct The Map movement is a landmark event by the damned attempt to overcome centuries of cartographic colonization that has reduced Africa systematically in global affairs with limited significance and power.
Centuries of manipulation of maps altered the position of opinions
Another example is the Mercator, which is amongst the most used projections of the world, where on this map Greenland and Africa are virtually equal in size to each other, according to AP News. However, when you put the same continents on the Equal Earth projection where continents are sized equally, 14 Greenlands would fit repugnantly in the African continent. For over 450 years, this repugnant perversion has made its mark on international consciousness.
Designed to assist European sailors on the sea, the Mercator map was developed in the 16th century by the Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator. By increasing the size of areas towards the poles, like North America and Greenland, and reducing the size of Africa and South America, the map grossly misrepresented the landmasses, which formed a symbolic hierarchy of power, continually strengthening colonial disputes.
The endorsement can change the movement that the African Union is giving
On August 14, the biggest organization to have endorsed the campaign was the African Union, hence a substantial milestone on the pathway to the complete behavior of the “Correct The Map” campaign. In an interview with Reuters, the AU Commission Deputy Chairperson Selma Malika Haddabi explained that inakalatha (distorted) ayaff, particularly the size of the continent in a map and thus the worldviews of the continent, even in communication, the information tables, and policy formulation.
Revolutionary Equal Earth projection reveals Africa’s true dominance
In April, two African advocacy groups, Africa No Filter and Speak Up Africa, initiated a campaign to compel schools, international NGOs, and media houses to use the Equal Earth projection. The Equal Earth projection is a recent map where the curvature of the Earth is observed and continents are displayed in their actual sizes (proportions), unlike the Mercator case.
It is not only an African problem of correcting the map. It is a question of fact and correctness that is seen as the concern of the whole world. When many generations, in Africa and beyond, acquire information through an inverted map, they build a skewed perception of the place of Africa in the world, and that is what Fara Ndiaye, one of the co-founders and deputy executive director of Speak Up Africa, said.
How world institutions are not throwing away colonial cartography
According to NPR, groups such as NASA and National Geographic started to use the Equal Earth map. The World Bank explained to NPR that it is abandoning Mercator in favor of the Equal Earth due to the reason that it is focused on the notion that it is setting the terms to ensure that all people are represented accurately, and it appears on all screens.
The pampering to be called the Correct The Map is, of course, much more than that mere technical correction; it is a decolonization of world conscience and a confrontation with centuries of visual manipulation. This movement has the potential of revealing the methods through which colonial authorities distorted cartography to reduce the perceived significance of Africa, with the support of the African Union and the continued institutionalization around these questions.