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UN General Assembly adopts new world map that shows Africa's true size.
Saturday, 5 September, 2026. Permalink
The Equal Earth projection is an equal-area, pseudocylindrical world map projection created in 2018 by Bojan Šavrič, Bernhard Jenny, and Tom Patterson.
Key Features
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True relative sizes: It shows continents and oceans at their actual sizes compared to one another, unlike the traditional Mercator map.
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Balanced appearance: It is inspired by the Robinson projection but fixes its size distortions while keeping a visually pleasing, globe-like shape.
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Straight parallels: Lines of latitude are straight, making it easy to see how far north or south a place is from the equator. [1, 2, 3, 4]
Recent Developments
The United Nations has voted to adopt a resolution for the world to formally phase out the traditional Mercator map of the globe in favour of one that more accurately displays Africa's size.
This global shift promotes the Equal Earth projection to correct historical size biases that enlarged northern regions like Europe and North America while shrinking Africa and other tropical areas.
If you'd like, I can share more details on how the mathematical equations work or compare it specifically to the Mercator and Gall-Peters projections.
