On 4 September, the United Nations General Assembly adopted (with 164 votes) a ‘Correct the Map’ resolution sponsored by Togo and backed by members of the African Union.
It aims to correct a misperception of maps of Africa which, since the 16th century, have been based on wrong proportions.
The map which has been used up until now was designed in 1569 by the Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator (1512-1592).
It contains distortions of real territorial sizes which suggest that Africa was about the size of Greenland.
In fact, the African continent is 14 times larger and places the rest of the world in another physical dimension.
In 2018, cartographers worked on redrawing the global map as ‘Equal Earth projection’, correcting the sizes of all continents.
This triggered the #CorrectTheMap campaign, which resulted in a non-binding resolution adopted by an overwhelming majority.
The United States was the only member state to vote against this long overdue correction.
GROWING AWARENESS
Mapping Africa, according to the Mercator projection, was a visual marginalisation of the African continent.
It depicted a Eurocentric, colonial-imperialist understanding of being the self-declared centre of the world.
Its survival until now was one of many pieces in a puzzle documenting global asymmetries imposed by world views since the era of so-called enlightenment.
Europe’s self-exaltation was based on military power during violent expansion into other parts of the world (misleadingly labelled a ‘civilising mission’).
It left a lasting mark on the institutionalisation of Eurocentric perceptions and memory culture.
It created the impression that Africa was a continent without its own history before and during European colonialism.
It is only recently that textbooks and media in ‘the belly of the beast’ have started to correct some patronising perceptions that diminish the continent and her people to a mere footnote of European history.
More awareness has gradually evolved among scholars over the intrinsic asymmetric research collaborations in the past and the epistemic violence which obstructed knowledge production.
Both prevented in a toxic ideological and material way (in terms of research funding) true collaboration.
‘COGNITIVE CORRECTION’
The long survival of the Mercator map projection from the 1500s is just one example of the marginalisation of an entire continent in terms of geographical dimensions, and was an integral part of a colonial mindset.
Denigration and degradation also happened in the hierarchical classifications of human beings.
Prominent thinkers in European countries such as England, France and Germany cultivated a blatant form of racism based on pseudo-science.
For them, central Europeans represented the highest form of culture and development, while Africans were ranked at the bottom.
Abandoning the Mercator projection is just a modest, albeit symbolically significant, “cognitive correction”. But it is only the tip of the colonial-apologetic iceberg.
The legacy of colonial oppression it created in former colonies, also in terms of mindsets, remains alive.
The material, as well as institutional and mental structures, left behind by ‘German South West Africa’ and the apartheid regime are among prominent examples.
Former colonial powers are only reluctantly (if at all) willing to admit the lasting damage their expansion caused in other parts of the world.
It benefited the colonial powers at the expense of the colonised.
Current debates and demands for reparations, starting with the devastating consequences of the slave trade, must advocate for compensation for those regions and people on the receiving end of European expansion and exploitation.
BEYOND BORDERS
We should not be so naïve as to believe that replacing the Mercator projection will turn the tide.
It’s a useful new reference point but we should not expect too much.
When it comes to relevant aspects of compensation and fundamental changes in asymmetric global power relations, new maps will have little to no effect.
Having said this, there is of course symbolic value in the decision. It can serve as a useful reference point for further initiatives which seek to create more awareness in former colonising societies by promoting a fairer geographical picture of the African continent.
The resolution showed that an imperialist world view dominated cartography.
However, decolonising a map will not eliminate putting the African continent and her people on the margins in real terms.
We must continue to take a stand and to critically challenge the reproduction of colonial mindsets wherever they exist.
One of the consequences of colonialism has been that it also created colonial or rather colonising mindsets among those who rule in so-called ‘post’-colonial societies.
– Henning Melber is an associate of the Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala and extraordinary professor at the University of Pretoria and the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein.
