The New Africa

Although Asia remains the largest continent in the world, Africa's true size has now been recognised after over 400 years of misrepresentation.

Indeed, this follows a recent United Nations General Assembly resolution moved by Togo 🇹🇬 and was massively supported. Studies have shown that about 164 countries including France and the UK supported this motion with barely six countries abstaining. The United States of America voted against it. But that didn't distort anything.

This idea was first discussed in August 2025 at the African Union, where Togo was chosen and prepared to move this resolution in 2026. The result is the current good news, and it shows that if we plan and hold onto our commitments as African leaders, we can achieve a great deal. In a nutshell, our planned work didn't end up in our mouths but rather was put to use.

Previously, the continent was believed to be the second largest, only in abstract. But just look at what went on recently.

It did show that nothing can be hidden forever. To be specific, no truth can be hidden forever because as we advance as humans, we produce intelligentsia, and the more they come along, the easier we can uncover the hidden.

Following the 1569 world map made by Gerardus Mercator, which depicted Africa's size as the same as Greenland, we should have known that the developer had a different intention for creating that map. He created it to support movement and easy sailing across the world. But because of the lack of enlightenment and awareness of certain concepts, we clung to this to this day. Just imagine! We believed it and loved it. We accepted it and followed it. But I am asking that, at that time, where were we when it was being accepted for use? In the sixteenth century, we were busily being colonised. That's a fact because it was one of the key factors that were considered before making that map. For instance, studies show Europe was made larger whilst the countries being colonised were shrunk. Africa and South America were made smaller. It makes sense because if you were the leader of the world at that time, what would you do? Europe was the leader of the world, so it appeared larger on the map with the Mercator's world map projection. Further to this, locations closer to the equator were made smaller whilst places at the top of the map or away from the equator were enlarged. That's why Greenland was the same size as Africa. Greenland is located at the top of the map while Africa is at the bottom.

But you have all seen it, maybe not seen it yet, but it shows we are bigger than we have always been perceived. Well, this is not to brag about our standard or beat our chest about how big Africa is. This is a civic expression of concern. Critics such as Arno Peters said, “It overvalues the white man and distorts the picture of the world to the advantage of the colonial masters of the time.” He was talking about that map. To him, we can only use that map if that is our only option, but luckily, we have had something better.

After Mercator's map came the 1921 Winkel Tripel map by Oswald Winkel from Germany. He tried to reduce the distortion previously done to the world map, and of course, he did it, and in the year 1998, the National Geographic Society announced it was the preferred map so far. As a result of that, it was followed and used by many educational institutions and was captured in books. But it also had some flaws around the North and South Poles, making it inaccurate.

Moving forward, the 1973 map by Gall Peters also came along. These were two different names joined together. We had James Gall and Arno Peters, who had had a second look at the previous map and came out with a better projection in two distinct years. Whilst Arno Peters critiqued the Mercator's projection, he projected something better in 1973, and his solution came out with equal areas of land as those on the map. Unknown to him, James had done the same thing in 1885. So they merged their work. Each portion on the map was an equal representation of the real land. That depicted accuracy. At that time, the UN said it was the standard world map so far, and many British schools used it. Studies, however, showed its mistakes, including the fact that the continents were made equal in shape and hence, "The Arctic appears too flat, and the equator too tall." This map was a political map, the reason why some scholars argued that it was politically correct.

Another world map (Dymaxion projection)
was made in 1943 by a man called Buckminster Fuller. He was not a cartographer, but he made his projection possible. His map didn't have top, down, right, or left. Its shape couldn't be easily comprehended. His map didn't have a straight comprehensive shape as it was made of 20 triangles joined together and placed horizontally.

He realised that almost every world map had other countries facing the north and the south whilst others were in the middle. This, according to him, can be likened to cultural biases that can affect the map-making profession. But the good news was that it could be folded to form a sphere-like icosahedron. To him, that shape could only help us view the map in a way we can understand and appreciate. A comprehensive way that is not the same as the mapmaker sees it. Critics, nonetheless, say that his mistake was that since he was not a cartographer but had used different latitudes and longitudes on each triangle, it made the directions of the triangles inaccurate. It however depicted that all the continents were joined together and according to Fuller, it gave us the vision of the one island earth, in other words, the post-nationalist world, a world interconnected as opposed to being divided into nations, etc. This type of world map can't be used for serious cartographical activities.

Fast-forward to 2018, the Equal Earth map was developed, projecting Africa's true size. This has become more prominent, as we can see. If you have not seen it yet, you can quickly find out. The new map projected the continent as having about 30.3 million square kilometres representing its true relative size. Besides this abundant land size, other researchers predict that the continent has the largest youthful population in the world and is replete with resources of all kinds. Basically, we can argue that we are everything. Africa is almost everything in the world.

The creation of the new map puts the continent first at first sight.

It makes us automatically acceptable in everything the world will want to start, and we can never underestimate that.

But then, come to think of it, one thing remains the same; human resources. We are still on the battlefield. This is something no cartographer can develop for us. It is something no one can create to project us if we fail to project ourselves. When we overlook it by only clinging to this idea of "Oh, after all we are bigger on the world map" and don't work on our mindsets, leadership, and political issues, we had better stay as we used to be on the old map. Because even an elephant is that elegantly colossal but is still goaded and driven by a tiny mahout.

AdamIntegrated....