A historic vote in the United Nations General Assembly is now bringing change. The UN has approved a resolution to switch worldwide to the Equal Earth map, which shows the exact proportions between countries and continents realistically.

The deception of the Mercator projection
The world map we all know from school or Google Maps is based on the Mercator projection. This method was devised in the sixteenth century by Flemish cartographer Gerard Mercator. It was an excellent tool for navigation, but it has a major drawback when you want to represent a spherical Earth on a flat surface.

With the Mercator method, areas around the equator are shown proportionally smaller, while countries closer to the poles appear enormous. As a result, Europe and Russia look huge on the map, while the entire African continent appears insignificantly small. In reality, Africa is the second-largest continent on Earth after Asia. Countries such as the United States, China, India and most of Europe could easily fit within the borders of the African continent.

Historic step by the UN
The fifty-five countries of the African Union, supported by civil society organisations through the campaign Correct The Map, have spent years campaigning against this geographical misinformation. News agency Reuters recently reported that the UN has officially adopted the resolution. The aim is to introduce the use of the Equal Earth map worldwide, so that children in particular learn to see the world in the correct proportions at school.

What does this mean for your journey?
At Beyond Routes we design journeys based on actual distances and road conditions. Through our own experience of more than one hundred thousand kilometres on African roads, we know exactly how impressive the distances are in practice.

Download this map yourself at equal-earth.com

(Sources: NOS News and news agency Reuters)

The true scale of Africa: now on the Equal Earth map