The African Union also provided its support for this campaign last week which promotes a more respectful projection of the proportions of the continents. Africa would be enlarged.
“Yes, yes and yes”. In a post on social network X, the rebellious MEP Rima Hassan provided on August 17 support for the proposal brought by the African Union, an intergovernmental organization of 55 Member States, to redefine the dimensions of current world cards.
The objective? «Correct the map»either “Correct the card” in French. This is the name of a campaign supported by the intergovernmental organization. It is carried by two African plea organizations, Africa no filter et Speak Up Africa, who campaign for a redefinition of the proportions granted to continents on current geographic maps. It is mainly, for these two organizations, to restore a fairer size to Africa, “Artificially” Half -reduced, with a decolonialist objective.
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“Correcting the map, it is much more than a technical question, it is a strong symbolic act that touches (…) to the story that we want to build around the African continent”, In this way with RFI Fara Ndiaye, deputy director of the Speak Up Africa organization, behind the correct campaign The Map.
But in reality, Africa is not the only distorted geographic area on current planispheres, and reason is mathematical: it is in fact impossible to account for the exact proportions of the terrestrial globe on a flat surface.
Mercator Project
The proportions of Africa on most current global cards are rooted in the graphic representation of the world established by the Flemish geographer Gerhard Mercator. In the 16th century, navigators seemed to know the road to follow in Cap Constant, to get from one point from the globe to the other: this path is not the shortest, but it allows however to navigate the compass.
Concretely, the Flemish scholar therefore distorts the proportions of the terrestrial expanses so that the parallels and the meridians (these circles which enclose the planet) can keep their right angles. Navigators can thus follow a single direction, and keep the course on their compass, without ever deviating to it.
Wikipedia / Creative Commons
This new projection constitutes a real revolution for the maritime industry, since it allows to report directly on the map the angles measured in the compass, and vice versa. On the other hand, it does not keep distances or surfaces. But consequently, the land located at the equator level see their size atrophy, while those located at the proximity of the poles become colossal. Thus from Greenland, which unfolds on an immense expanse, which one would approach, visually, from the area of Africa: however, on real size, 14 lands like Greenland could hold in the black continent. Ditto for Alaska, which seems, in the projection of Mercator, as large as Brazil. In reality, the country of South America is five times more extensive. “Cards are not an exact science, it is a system of projection of reality. And mapping are no exception to the rule ”explains to the online media Slate Olivier Clochard, research manager at CNRS and migration specialist.
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Give back to countries their real surface
Mercator’s projection has gone through the ages, until the majority of geography textbooks are displayed: it also remains, even today, the default model on the Google Maps mobile application. In the meantime, other cards have appeared, like that of the Scottish James Gall in 1855, resurrected by Arno Peters (1916-2002) a century later, in 1973. This intended to return their real area to countries to the detriment of their forms. Concretely, the areas of equal size on the globe are also on the map. On this mapping, Africa is larger, but it is however distorted.
Still others have chosen to abandon the rectangular form of the planisphere: thus of the Authagraph projection, designed by the Japanese architect Hajime Narukawa in 1999, which divides the representation of the earth into 96 triangles, transposed on a tetrahedron card (geometric forms composed of 4 triangular faces) to preserve the size and shape of the continents and oceans. Among the most used, there is today the cylindrical projection of Robinson, presented by the American Robert Robinson in 1963, or that of Mollweide, who favors the conservation of areas to the conservation of angles. To obtain the most exact vision of the terrestrial globe, the simplest solution is ultimately to use a map.
