The United Nations General Assembly has passed a resolution calling for a new world map that accurately reflects the true size of continents - particularly Africa, which has been getting the short end of the cartographic stick for centuries. The 'Correct the Map' resolution aims to fix the egregious error on the Mercator map, where Africa appears roughly the same size as Greenland, despite being about 14 times larger. Because nothing says 'accurate representation of reality' like a landmass that's 14 times its depicted size.

The new map, dubbed the Equal Earth projection, better represents the true sizes of landmasses, but - surprise, surprise - it comes with its own set of problems. As with any attempt to flatten a sphere onto a rectangle, something's got to give. The Mercator map, created in 1569 by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator, was designed for one purpose: helping European sailors navigate the oceans. As cartography professor James Cheshire at University College London explained to the BBC, 'He wanted a straight line to be drawn on a map to look like a straight line in reality if you followed a compass bearing. That was what it was intended to do, and that's what it does brilliantly well.'

But to keep those angles correct, Mercator had to stretch the grid lines wider as they moved away from the equator, making countries near the equator appear smaller and those near the poles look like they've been inflated. It's a distortion born of the impossibility of accurately representing a globe on a flat chart - a problem that has plagued mapmakers for over 450 years. Yet Mercator's creation remains the basis for maps in classrooms, on TV, online, and even on Google Maps.

Critics argue that this distortion has a psychological effect: we instinctively view bigger things as more important, so seeing Africa as smaller than it is subtly downplays its vast resources, population, and investment opportunities. Kenyan geographer Kioko Muendo told the BBC, 'Maps are more than just guides for travellers - they shape how regions are perceived politically and economically.'

The Equal Earth map, developed by a team of cartographers in 2018, aims to address this by presenting the size and shape of landmasses more accurately. It was initially adopted by 54 members of the African Union before the UN got on board. But this accuracy comes at a cost: it sacrifices the straight lines that made Mercator perfect for navigation, and it can't be used for measuring true distances. As Cheshire put it, 'You can preserve area, or you can preserve shape, or you can preserve distance and direction, but not everything at once perfectly, because otherwise you'd be back to a sphere.'

And let's not forget the Peters world map, designed by German historian Arno Peters in the early 1970s, based on a projection first described by Scottish cartographer James Gall in 1855. That one sacrifices shape for scale, squishing polar regions and stretching the equator. It fixes the Greenland-Africa size issue and preserves straight lines of longitude and latitude - but those lines don't represent true constant compass bearings, so it's useless for navigation. And everything looks a bit off.

So, the UN has voted to adopt a map that's more accurate about size but less useful for sailing. Progress, we suppose. At least Africa won't be the butt of the cartographic joke anymore.