Africa is much bigger than most maps show, and a new campaign wants that fixed

The Brief

On most world maps, Greenland and Africa look about the same size. In reality, Africa is so large that at least 14 Greenlands could fit inside it.

That distortion, common on the widely used Mercator projection, is driving a campaign led by African advocacy groups and now backed by the African Union. Supporters say the way Africa is shown on maps affects how the world sees the continent of more than 1.4 billion people.

The backstory:

The Mercator map was created in the 16th century by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator. It was designed to help sailors maintain straight-line courses at sea, but it also distorted the scale of landmasses — inflating areas near the poles and shrinking regions closer to the equator.

That means continents such as Africa and South America appear