{"id":44612,"date":"2026-09-04T11:05:30","date_gmt":"2026-09-04T09:05:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/?post_type=news&#038;p=44612"},"modified":"2026-09-04T11:05:30","modified_gmt":"2026-09-04T09:05:30","slug":"un-to-vote-on-africa-led-map-reform","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/news\/un-to-vote-on-africa-led-map-reform\/","title":{"rendered":"UN to vote on Africa-led map reform"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>The United Nations (UN) General Assembly will vote on an African-led effort to change how the world sees itself on a map.<\/div>\n<div>\nThe draft resolution argues that the centuries-old Mercator projection dramatically enlarges landmasses farther from the equator, leaving Africa appearing disproportionately small.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Backed by the African Union, the text encourages governments, schools, international\u00a0<span class=\"x_spanWithBackgroundColor\">organisations<\/span>\u00a0and technology companies to use Equal Earth and other equal-area maps where continental size matters.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>It doesn&#8217;t ban Mercator but seeks to establish more proportionally accurate maps as a new global norm.<\/p>\n<p>Africa is taking a campaign to change the way the world is represented on maps to the UN, with Togo playing a leading role in an effort that argues the continent has been visually diminished for centuries.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;SABC&#8211;<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":31935,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"news-type":[26],"class_list":["post-44612","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-general_news","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"","published_date":"","news_description":"UN will vote on an African-led effort to change how the world sees itself on a map","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/44612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/44612\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44613,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/44612\/revisions\/44613"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=44612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}