Africa is the world’s second largest continent by area and population. You would never know it from most maps.

For centuries, the Mercator projection has misrepresented Africa’s true size, inflating Europe and North America while shrinking Africa to nearly half its actual dimensions. On Mercator, Greenland appears almost as large as Africa. In reality, Africa is fourteen times larger. This is not a minor cartographic technicality. Maps shape how we see power, identity, and importance. When African children grow up seeing their continent minimized in classrooms and media, it shapes their sense of place in the world. When global audiences absorb the same distortion, it reinforces perceptions of Africa as peripheral, smaller, weaker, less significant.

Correct the Map is Speak Up Africa and Africa No Filter’s campaign to end that distortion. In partnership with the African Union, marking the first time a pan-African institution has taken an official position on the visual representation of the continent, we are calling on governments, media outlets, educational institutions, and international organizations to adopt the Equal Earth projection: an accurate, area-preserving representation that shows continents as they truly are.

Our demand is straightforward: show Africa as it really is.

Through a global petition, digital advocacy, and strategic engagement, we are building the political will to make accurate maps the norm, in school curricula, newsrooms, and international institutions worldwide. Because correcting the map is not just a technical adjustment. It is a political act. It restores Africa’s rightful place in the global imagination and corrects the story the world has been told about the continent, in classrooms, in the media, and in the minds of future generations.

We are not asking for a perfect map. We are asking for a fair one.