By Catarina Demony and AyenDeng Bior

LONDON/DAKAR (Reuters) -The African Union has backed a campaign to end the use by governments and international organisations of the 16th-century Mercator map of the world in favour of one that more accurately displays Africa’s size.

Created by cartographer Gerardus Mercator for navigation, the projection distorts continent sizes, enlarging areas near the poles like North America and Greenland while shrinking Africa and South America.

“It might seem to be just a map, but in reality, it is not,” AU Commission deputy chairperson Selma Malika Haddadi told Reuters, saying the Mercator fostered a false impression that Africa was “marginal”, despite being the world’s second-largest continent by area, with 54 nations and over a billion people.

Such stereot

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