There was a lot written in latest weeks in regards to the African Union’s endorsement of the Right the Map marketing campaign. Reuters The true dimension of Africa is without doubt one of the higher explanations of why Africa is encouraging the usage of the Equal Earth map projection over different maps.
In a neatly illustrated article Reuters explains how for hundreds of years, the Mercator projection has dominated school rooms and navigation, and the way its distortions have profoundly misrepresented Africa’s true scale. A few animated maps are used to indicate how on Mercator maps, Greenland appears to be like almost the identical dimension as Africa regardless of being 14 instances smaller, whereas Canada and Russia additionally seem deceptively comparable.
In actuality, Africa spans 30.3 million sq. kilometers – about thrice Canada’s dimension. One other comparative map is utilized by Reuters to indicate how Africa can also be bigger than the U.S., China, India, and far of Europe mixed. The African Union, argue that this long-standing distortion is greater than a cartographic quirk; it has fueled perceptions of Africa as “marginal” regardless of its huge dimension and significance.
The Right The Map marketing campaign is pushing for adoption of the Equal Earth projection, which preserves proportional land areas extra precisely than Mercator whereas nonetheless providing a sensible international view.
