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The ongoing debate regarding the true size of the African continent is significant and timely. The African Union is supporting the call to depict Africa in its true size as just and moral. Spearheaded by the advocacy groups Africa No Filter and Speak Up Africa, the #CorrectTheMapCampaign is calling for the use and adoption of the 2018 Equal Earth Projection that reflects the true size of countries and continents. As the world moves from a bipolar to a contested multipolar global politics, depicting and representing Africa objectively and fairly will not only be of geostrategic significance, but it will also symbolically and politically reverse the cartographic imaginations and misrepresentations imposed by colonialism and neo-colonial imperialism.
Maps appear to be neutral tools – objective and scientific representations of the world. Yet, beneath their seeming cartographic accuracy lies a history of distortion, misrepresentation and domination. Far from being innocent or objective sketches of geography, maps have always been political instruments, shaping how people see the world and their place in it. Nowhere is this clearer than in the case of Africa, a continent repeatedly diminished, both symbolically and physically, through the practice of what I would call cartographic colonialism. Here I argue that the shrinking of Africa on maps and the lingering consequences of these misrepresentations constitute not merely technical distortions but acts of epistemic violence. To reclaim the true size of Africa is to confront colonial Eurocentric worldviews and engage in the broader project of decolonizing the cartographic imagination of Africa.
The debates around Africa’s true size show how cartographic mapmaking is never neutral or impartial but deeply entangled with histories of power, epistemology, and representation. Hence, correcting the map through projections such as the Equal Earth model is not simply a technical adjustment but a political and symbolic act that challenges entrenched Eurocentric frameworks and the epistemic violence they reproduce. In supporting efforts such as the #CorrectTheMapCampaign, African institutions and activists are asserting both cartographic justice and geopolitical and geostrategic agency by insisting that how Africa is seen must reflect its actual scale, significance, and dignity. Reclaiming the continent’s true size is, therefore, part of a wider decolonial project – one that aims to unsettle inherited colonial imaginaries of ourselves and reshape global perceptions of Africa’s place in the world geopolitically.
The myth of the map
To many, maps seem neutral: a simple reflection of geographic reality. Yet maps are never free from ideology and geopolitics. As J.B. Harley, a historian of cartography, famously argued, “Maps are never value-free images; they are laden with the intentions and biases of their makers.” A prime example is the Mercator projection created in 1569 by Gerardus Mercator. While revolutionary for European navigation and colonialism, its design drastically distorts the relative size of landmasses: it expands Europe and North America while shrinking Africa and South America. Greenland, for instance, appears to be almost the same size as Africa on a Mercator map, even though Africa is about 14 times larger.
These cartographic distortions were not accidental; they reinforced Eurocentric worldviews and geopolitical agency. By presenting the Global North as larger, central, and dominant, the map visually encoded hierarchies of power and civilization. Africa, in turn, appeared as peripheral – smaller, less significant, and almost marginal to world history. Such cartographic representations became naturalized truths, shaping the imagination of generations who first encounter the world through the classroom map.
The Mercator projection’s enduring dominance illustrates how cartography has long served as a subtle yet powerful instrument of ideological representation. Its exaggerated depiction of the Global North and the minimization of Africa and other regions of the Global South helped naturalize geopolitical hierarchies, embedding Eurocentric assumptions into the everyday visual knowledge of the world. What appears as a technical or cartographic objectivity is in fact a profound political act of world-making: by shaping how people first learn to see the planet, such maps shape how they understand power and civilization itself. Recognizing and challenging these distortions is, therefore, essential not only for geographical accuracy but for dismantling the inherited cartographic regimes that continue to marginalize Africa in the global consciousness.
Cartographic colonialism
The term “cartographic colonialism” captures how European powers used map representations not simply to describe the world but also to conquer and reimagine it. In Africa, cartography was never about representing Africans’ own spatial realities; it was about rendering the continent governable through cartographic partition. The map became an instrument of control – demarcating trade routes, natural resources, and zones of extraction.
The Berlin Conference of 1884–85 epitomized this cartographic violence. In Berlin, European powers gathered not to consult Africans but to partition their lands on paper. With pen and ruler, European diplomats carved up Africa into colonies, drawing borders that cut across ethnic, linguistic, and cultural lines. These arbitrary boundaries endure today as state borders, producing countless conflicts and displacements. The very notion of Africa as a “map of countries” is itself a colonial construction – an invention that erased local geographic imaginations and belonging and replaced them with cartographic conveniences for colonial powers.
The concept of “cartographic colonialism” reveals how mapping was central to the colonial project, functioning not as a neutral record of space but as a tool for domination, extraction, and territorial reordering in the African continent. The Berlin Conference exemplified this cartographic violence, reducing African societies to abstract lines on paper and imposing borders that continue to shape political instability and fractured identities across the continent. The dismembering of the African pre-colonial body politic was, for instance, witnessed at the recent Piny Luo Festival where members of the larger Luo ethnic group from Ethiopia, South Sudan, Uganda, and Kenya gathered for a cultural festival in Siaya that was attended by the presidents of Kenya and Ugandan.
By exposing how these arbitrary boundaries and external spatial logics were imposed, we uncover the deep-rooted cartographic foundations of Africa’s contemporary challenges. Confronting this legacy is, therefore, essential to reclaiming African spatial imaginaries and advancing decolonial approaches that honour the continent’s own histories, geographies, and ways of belonging.
The true size of Africa
Against this history of distortion and misrepresentation, it is essential to depict the true scale of Africa. Far from being a minor appendage to the world, Africa is vast: it can fit the United States, China, India, Japan, and most of Europe within its landmass. Yet the popular imagination – shaped by Mercator-style maps – rarely grasps this geographic enormity and significance of Africa.
Digital tools such as “The True Size” website allow users to drag countries across the map and compare them to Africa. The results are startling: suddenly, the shrunken image of Africa in our minds collapses and is replaced by the realization that Africa is not small but colossal. This contrast reveals how deeply cartographic distortions have shaped perceptions of Africa. Africa is imagined as “smaller”, “weaker”, or “less significant”, not because of reality but because of the cartographic frameworks imposed upon it.
Moreover, restoring Africa’s true scale is more than a corrective exercise in geographic accuracy – it is a vital step toward dismantling the visual narratives that have long diminished the continent’s significance in global politics. Digital tools that reveal Africa’s actual immensity will help expose how deeply the Mercator projection has shaped global consciousness, embedding perceptions of Africa as a small, peripheral, and less important geopolitical entity. And by confronting these inherited cartographic illusions and misrepresentations, we open up space for new imaginaries in which Africa’s geographic, demographic, and geopolitical weight and might is recognized on its own terms. Depicting Africa accurately thus becomes an act of epistemic reclamation, challenging entrenched misconceptions and contributing to a broader project of decolonizing how the world sees Africa and Africans.
Psychology of scale and power
The political consequences of this shrinking of Africa cannot be underestimated. By rendering Africa small and peripheral, maps contributed to narratives of inferiority, dependency, and underdevelopment. Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic violence helps explain this process: the domination of Africa occurred not only through physical conquest but also through the imposition of symbolic representations that made domination appear natural.
Edward Said’s Orientalism further illuminates this point. Just as the “Orient” was constructed through a Western imagination that portrayed it as exotic, irrational, and backward, Africa too was constructed cartographically as a small territory waiting to be discovered, claimed, and “developed”. The image of a shrunken Africa fed into the colonial ideologies of “civilizing” missions and modernizing projects. Even today, the visual marginalization of Africa continues to reinforce global hierarchies of knowledge, economics, and politics.
The cartographic shrinking of Africa is more than a technical distortion – it is a form of symbolic violence that naturalizes global geopolitical inequalities. And by visually diminishing Africa, dominant map projections reinforced narratives of African inferiority and positioned the continent as peripheral, dependent, and lacking geopolitical agency. Through the sociological and historical lens of Pierre Bourdieu and Edward Said, these representations can be seen as powerful ideological tools: they produced an “Africa” that appeared small, knowable, and available for Western intervention, mirroring broader colonial discourses of civilizing and modernizing missions in the past – and in even in the present. The enduring political consequence is that these visual hierarchies continue to shape how Africa is imagined in global economic, academic, and political systems, subtly reproducing the very inequalities they helped construct.
Decolonizing cartography
In response, African scholars, geographers, and activists are reclaiming the map as a site of political struggle. Decolonizing cartography means exposing the biases of traditional/Eurocentric map projections and offering alternatives that restore Africa’s scale, dignity and geostrategic significance. Projections such as the Gall-Peters and the AuthaGraph correct the Mercator distortions, presenting Africa in its true size relative to other continents objectively.
Beyond technical fixes, decolonizing cartography also involves challenging the narratives and notions maps convey. In classrooms, non-governmental organizations, and art exhibitions, new cartographic practices are emerging: maps that highlight African trade networks, indigenous knowledge of land, and ecological diversity rather than colonial border partitions. These efforts are not just about geography; they are about reclaiming Africa’s rightful place in the global imagination.
Decolonizing cartography, therefore, becomes a political and epistemic project aimed at undoing centuries of visual marginalization. And by exposing the Eurocentric assumptions behind conventional projections and promoting alternatives that restore Africa’s true scale and complexity, scholars and activists are reclaiming the map as a tool of empowerment rather than misrepresentation. Yet these movements go beyond correcting measurements: they challenge the deeper narratives embedded in maps by showing African histories, knowledge systems, and spatial imaginaries of Africans. Through educational initiatives, artistic interventions, and community-based mapping, these new practices can reassert Africa’s agency and visibility, reshaping how the continent is understood in the global discourse on geopolitics.
Beyond geography: Epistemic liberation
The call and demand to restore the true size of Africa is about more than maps. It is part of the broader struggle for epistemic decolonization: the effort to dismantle colonial ways of knowing and imagining and to affirm African histories, geographies, and contributions. As Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o has argued in the context of language, the colonization of the mind is as deep as the colonization of land. To decolonize maps, then, is to decolonize our collective self-imagination as a continent.
Maps shape how we imagine the world. When Africa is diminished on the map, Africa is diminished in the mind. Correcting this distortion is not simply a cartographic correction but an act of reclaiming justice in the global imagination. It is to restore Africa to its true scale – geographically, politically, and geo-strategically.
Cartographic colonialism shrank Africa not only on paper but also in the global consciousness and imagination. Through the Mercator projection, the colonial partitioning of the continent, and the symbolic violence of distorted representations, maps reinforced Eurocentric hierarchies of representation and domination. Yet the true size of Africa reveals a continent immense, diverse, and central to global history and politics. Decolonizing cartography, therefore, is about reclaiming Africa’s rightful place – on the map and in the mind. To confront the colonial misrepresentation in maps is to begin a larger political project of epistemic liberation. Indeed, to decolonize maps is to decolonize thought and imagination of Africa and its place in the world.
Restoring the true size of Africa is an epistemic and political act aimed at undoing the deep mental and symbolic erasures produced by colonial cartography. As these distorted maps shrank Africa on paper, they also diminished its perceived significance in the global consciousness, thus reinforcing hierarchies that framed the continent as marginal, dependent, and knowable only through Eurocentric lenses – Africa and Africans become objects to be scrutinized and misrepresented. Hence, by challenging these distortions and reclaiming Africa’s scale, history, and intellectual presence, decolonizing cartography becomes part of a broader struggle for epistemic freedom – what Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o describes as decolonizing the mind.
Correcting the map, therefore, is not merely a technical adjustment: it is an assertion of dignity, agency, and geopolitical centrality, and a necessary step toward transforming how Africa is imagined in the world and its manifest role and destiny in the world as a centre of power, technology, civilization, and prosperity for the whole world.
