Exciting times for those of us who have for so long laboured under the yoke of geographical oppression. And I’m not talking about the excitable clowns over at the CapeXit circus, who would have us believe they are victims of a nefarious plot to make them South African against their will. No, I’m talking about all Africans who have been freed from the inferiority complex caused by our continent for centuries being depicted on world maps as much smaller than it really is.
I am, you will have guessed, talking about the recent resolution adopted at the UN in New York (a perhaps ironic location), which calls for the world to formally phase out the traditional Mercator map of the globe, and replace it with one that more accurately displays the size of Africa.
Ironic, because though 164 countries voted in favour of the resolution, there was one country that voted no. That was the nation formerly known as the land of the free, the United States of America. In a statement explaining the US’s vote, its representative said the measure “mocks the work and purpose of this institution. Instead of focusing on genuine problems of international peace, prosperity, or good relations, this body is debating map projects from the 16th century … Resolutions like this and the ideological agenda they promote are barnacles on our work here … When the UN questions why it is losing legitimacy in the world, and is not taken seriously, time and again, we point to resolutions such as this.”
This is a statement from a government whose supreme leader has decided to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, and change the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America. He has also mooted the idea of renaming New Mexico as New America and, on his “Truth” Social platform, posted: “Now that we have it under U.S.A. control, should we change the name Hormuz Strait to TRUMP STRAIT??? Like America itself, it would be ‘hotter’ than ever before!”
Ah, me. Perhaps the US’s UN representative should turn her frothy ire on her own country, and reread her own comments in relation to Trump’s renaming shenanigans, which some might argue mock the work and purpose of the US and are one more reason why the country is “losing legitimacy in the world”.
Size counts
As always with the current US regime, the motivation to vote against the new map is even crasser than it appears. It’s not (only) about the fact that it makes Africa look bigger; it’s about making the US look smaller. Turns out that Africa is not actually much smaller in absolute map area on a standard Mercator projection, and the big difference is relative. As the UN sees it, the shift means France, the US and Russia will appear smaller relative to equatorial countries, and illustrates the unusual dynamics of this decades-long debate. It turns out that equal-area maps do not make Africa larger; they remove the exaggeration Mercator gives landmasses closer to the poles.
Imagine the horror that would cause a man who wears extra-long ties. Size counts, if you’re a certain type of narcissist, which is why Trump consistently claims to draw crowds that are much larger in his imagination than in reality. Is it possible for a nation to be narcissistic? Evidence would seem to suggest that it is.
The country that led the campaign to get the new map adopted was Togo, which sits at about 125 on the list of countries by size (South Africa is at 25) and which, rather satisfyingly, is described as “slightly smaller than the US state of West Virginia” in the CIA World Factbook. And that’s part of the problem the new map is designed to address: that an African country should be compared to a US state reveals a lot. As Robert Dussey, Togo’s foreign minister, said: “A fair map does not change the geography of the world; it changes how we see the world.”
You might think that worrying about how a map depicts your continent is a little frivolous, but in an indication of how right the Togolese minister is, Japan Times reports that the Japanese government has demanded a correction to a version of the new map, claiming that it uses the same colour for Russian territory as it does for four islands that the two countries have a territorial dispute over. I understand their concern. You wouldn’t want to give Putin any encouragement.
Most people will applaud the new cartographic fairness showing Africa in its true proportion to the Western world. But they’ll also feel that living up to the new billing is going to take more than a UN resolution.
