The United Nations has adopted a resolution calling for the widely used Mercator world map to be replaced with a projection that more fairly represents the true size of continents, after criticism that the centuries-old map distorts perceptions of regions such as Africa. The "Correct the Map" resolution, passed by the UN General Assembly, addresses long-standing concerns that the Mercator projection, created in 1569 to aid ocean navigation, makes landmasses near the poles appear far larger relative to those near the equator than they really are.

Under the Mercator map, Africa appears roughly the same size as Greenland, despite being about 14 times larger in reality, a distortion critics such as Kenyan geographer Kioko Muendo say has downplayed the continent's resources, population and economic significance. The UN has instead adopted the Equal Earth projection, developed by cartographers in 2018 and already used by 54 African Union member states, which more accurately depicts land area but sacrifices the straight navigational lines that made Mercator's map so useful, and cannot be used to measure true distances. Experts note that no flat map can perfectly preserve area, shape and distance simultaneously, as demonstrated by other alternatives such as the 1970s Peters projection, which corrects size distortions but skews the shapes of landmasses.