{"text":[[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":5.16,"text":"In Sylvie and Bruno Concluded, Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, turns his attention to another mad-hatter subject: maps. One character relates his country’s pursuit of cartographical perfection in the form of a 1:1 map. Asked whether it is much used, he replies that it has never yet been unfolded. “The farmers objected: they said it would cover the whole country, and shut out the sunlight! So we now use the country itself, as its own map, and I assure you it does nearly as well.”"}],[{"start":36.28,"text":"All maps confront the reality that the only truly accurate representation of something is the thing itself. That is particularly true of our near-spherical planet when attempts are made to flatten it into two dimensions. You can roughly preserve the correct distances, directions, shapes or sizes, but not all at once."}],[{"start":55.32,"text":"The version that has dominated for centuries is a map first presented by the Flemish mapmaker Gerardus Mercator in 1569. The so-called Web Mercator is still the basis of Google Maps today. Designed primarily as a tool for maritime navigation, the Mercator projection had become standard by the 18th century, a position it held until this month."}],[{"start":77.24,"text":"On September 4, 164 nations at the UN General Assembly voted to adopt a new map, known as the Equal Earth projection, which far more accurately represents the size of continents."}],[{"start":89,"text":"The decision, in response to a “Correct the Map” campaign championed by the African Union, has a stark impact on the way the 54 countries of Africa are represented. In one much-cited example, the Mercator projection, which enlarges countries the further they are from the equator, shows Greenland and Africa to be roughly the same size. The Equal Earth map restores the proper proportions: Africa is 14 times larger."}],[{"start":114.22,"text":"The only country to vote against the resolution was the US. Yaryna Ferencevych, a US representative to the UN, said the apparently anodyne resizing exercise hid a more radical agenda of “promoting reparations and ‘cognitive justice’”."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":128.52,"text":"“Instead of focusing on genuine problems of international peace, prosperity or good relations, this body is debating map projects from the 16th century,” she scoffed, adding that it was no wonder the UN was no longer taken seriously."}],[{"start":144.6,"text":"But the decision was celebrated in Africa where academics welcomed it as a small, if symbolic, corrective to centuries in which Africa’s place in the world has been marginalised."}],[{"start":154.56,"text":"“Maps are not innocent drawings,” Carlos Lopes, an economist from Guinea-Bissau, told CapeTalk radio in South Africa. “They influence what investors value, what policymakers prioritise, what journalists consider important, what societies believe is possible."}],[{"start":169.92,"text":"“And Africa is not a small appendage to the world,” Lopes added, referring to an internet meme depicting China, India, western Europe, the US and Japan all fitting snugly into the African continent."}],[{"start":182.88,"text":"Christine Mungai, editor-in-chief of The Continent, a pan-African digital newspaper, says: “It may seem like a small decision but symbols really matter. Symbols, myths and legends are the places in which human beings find meaning.”"}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":196.36,"text":"Mungai says she grew up in Kenya with a distorted picture of her own continent. Flying to Ghana for the first time, she was astounded to find the flight took nearly six hours and would have taken eight to reach Senegal. “When you look at the Mercator projection, you would never have guessed it.”"}],[{"start":212.08,"text":"Mungai compares the dominance of that map in her childhood imagination to watching Hollywood films. “I always felt completely safe because all the aliens knew exactly where to land: America,” she says."}],[{"start":224.76,"text":"Both Mungai and Lopes argue that the cartographical diminishment of Africa has real-world consequences, both on Africans’ view of themselves and on the world’s perception of Africa. Many people remain woefully ignorant of Africa’s geography, not infrequently regarding it as a single country and viewing its people — who will by 2050 comprise one-quarter of humanity — as somehow marginal to the story of the modern world."}],[{"start":248.94,"text":"In many respects, of course, Africa has been central. That goes from the evolution of humanity itself, through the extraction of slaves, rubber and gold in the period of rapid western industrialisation to today with the centrality of Africa’s critical minerals to phones and batteries. African culture has had a profound impact on the world from ancient Egypt to the ubiquity today of African and African-inspired music, literature, fashion and visual arts."}],[{"start":279.32,"text":"There has been what Howard W French, in his book Born in Blackness, calls a “centuries-long process of diminishment, trivialization, and erasure of Africans and of people of African descent from the story of the modern world”."}],[{"start":292.72,"text":"Yet Ken Opalo, an associate professor of political science at Georgetown University, slightly shrugs at the UN’s decision to retire a map that helped promote that view."}],[{"start":302.88,"text":"“A good and accurate representation of the world is all well and good,” he says. But, he points out, nothing has prevented African governments from printing “correct maps” in their own school textbooks if they choose to do so."}],[{"start":317.36,"text":"More broadly, Opalo argues, African elites spend too much time worrying about how they are perceived by the rest of the world and too little changing their economies and societies for the better. It has become fashionable, for example, to blame western rating agencies for inflating the perception of African risk and therefore depriving Africa of affordable capital, he says."}],[{"start":338.64,"text":"“You can fix a map, you can fix narratives and global credit rating agencies, but it doesn’t absolve African countries from also having to do the hard work of fixing their own problems, collecting their own data or sorting out their own fiscal situations.”"}],[{"start":352.48,"text":"Still, maps do matter. For all Washington’s ridiculing of the UN resolution, Donald Trump has devoted plenty of time to cartography. Lester Kiewit, a journalist at CapeTalk radio who hosted its discussion on the map, says: “They say that the world has more important issues, but they also have a president who is changing the name of lakes, so go figure.”"}],[{"start":375.88,"text":"Only this week, Trump enraged Iceland by producing a map on his Truth Social platform showing the American flag covering the country along with Mexico, Canada and Greenland."}],[{"start":385.88,"text":"In July, US diplomats let slip their contempt for Africa when, at an international conference, they presented an AI-generated map of the continent with several countries wildly misplaced. Ivory Coast had been moved some 5,000 kilometres from its rightful location in west Africa, the equivalent of placing Britain somewhere in the vicinity of Sudan."}],[{"start":408.4,"text":"Bojan Šavrič, one of the creators of the Equal Earth projection, says the idea of a definitive world map is illusory in an age when new versions can be created with a few keystrokes."}],[{"start":419.76,"text":"Šavrič compares the process of making a two-dimensional map to peeling an orange. “It’s basically impossible to completely flatten the Earth’s surface without tearing, stretching or squishing it.” Map selection, he says, is picking the distortion you want. No sailor would use the Equal Earth projection for navigation."}],[{"start":439,"text":"Jerry Brotton, professor of renaissance studies at Queen Mary University of London and author of A History of the World in Twelve Maps, welcomes the Equal Earth projection but doubts it will make much difference. “Kids no longer have maps on their wall,” he says. “We’ve moved on from that debate completely.”"}],[{"start":455.4,"text":"Which single map prevails, Brotton says, is less important than which big tech companies dominate our world view. Google Maps, he says, responds to commercial rather than cartographical incentives. Yet even Big Tech, he adds, sometimes “bends the knee”. Look up Lake Ontario on Google Maps and there (in parentheses admittedly) are the words: “Lake America”."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":478.88,"text":"David Pilling is the FT’s Africa editor. Cartography by Hiroshi Kuno"}],[{"start":483.8,"text":"Join our online book group on Facebook at FT Books Café and follow FT Weekend on Instagram and X"}],[{"start":489.3,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1789191886_7903.mp3"}