A row has broken out over United Nations-backed plans to replace the centuries-old Mercator world map with a new projection that gives Africa a truer sense of scale, with critics dismissing the move as unnecessary "wokery". Supporters argue the change corrects a long-standing distortion that has made the continent appear no bigger than Greenland, when in reality it is around 14 times larger, and say the shift matters because inaccurate maps have historically understated the size, and by extension the significance, of African and other equatorial nations.

The Mercator projection, devised by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569 to aid sea navigation, inevitably distorts land size because it is mathematically impossible to render a curved globe accurately on a flat map, shrinking regions near the Equator and enlarging those near the poles. Criticism of the map grew from the 1970s, when it was branded an act of "cartographic colonialism", and gained wider attention through a 2001 episode of The West Wing. In 2018 cartographers produced the alternative Equal Earth projection, since adopted by Nasa, and in February this year the African Union's 54 member states backed it for more accurately depicting continental sizes, paving the way for the UN vote in its favour.