Cartographers explain how the Equal Earth projection shows Africa’s true relative size and why the world map we use matters.

It’s been many years since the continent seemed more spectral, and its people more vulnerable, than it does now.

The African Union endorsed a map that reflects the truer relative size of the continent. (map public domain via Equal Earth) The African Union, an intergovernmental organization of 55 African ...

The new map makes Africa, Latin America, South Asia and Oceania larger than the traditional Mercator projection.

The common Mercator projection map distorts the size of continents, making Africa appear much smaller than it is. The United Nations General Assembly voted to encourage the use of maps that more ...

The Mercator world map, long a fixture in classrooms globally, makes the European Union appear almost as large as Africa. In reality, Africa is more than seven times bigger. It is a distortion that ...

Africa did not supersize itself last week. Its borders were not magically extended. Neither did its mountain peaks rise or its rivers rush into new waters. Only the map changed. The world has been ...