The General Debate of the United Nations General Assembly will be held from September 22 to 28 in New York, an annual gathering where the world’s leading heads of state present their vision from the podium. For Togo, this session will be an opportunity to continue its “Correct the Map” campaign, an initiative that has the backing of the African Union.

This campaign aims to correct the distortions of the Mercator projection, a world map developed in the 16th century by the Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator, originally designed to facilitate maritime navigation.

The problem: this projection artificially enlarges regions close to the poles—such as Greenland, North America, or Europe—at the expense of equatorial areas, including Africa.

The concrete result: on the maps most commonly used around the world, Africa appears comparable in size to Greenland, when in reality it is nearly 14 times larger. With more than 30 million square kilometers, the African continent is nonetheless the second largest in the world after Asia.

An initiative led by Togo and the African Union

Mandated by the African Union, which adopted a resolution in September 2025 encouraging its 55 member states to abandon the Mercator projection, Togo is spearheading this campaign at the international level, drawing on support from organizations such as Africa No Filter and Speak Up Africa. The goal: to promote the adoption of alternative cartographic projections, such as the Equal Earth projection, considered more faithful to the true proportions of the continents.

“The size of the African continent as we see it on the globe is geographically inaccurate,” Togo’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Robert Dussey, had declared, calling for “scientific truth.”

For the campaign’s proponents, the stakes go far beyond cartography: how continents are depicted is believed to durably shape the world’s perception of their true importance. “When Africa is distorted on a map, it is also diminished in people’s minds,” several advocates of the initiative argue.

Togo thus intends to secure the adoption, during this session of the General Assembly, of a resolution inviting UN member states to favor a more faithful cartographic representation of the world—a major diplomatic and institutional challenge, but one that already enjoys broad support across the African continent.