By Kayode Adebiyi

For more than 400 years, the global view of geography has been quietly distorted by a 16th-century map projection.

Designed for navigation, it drastically misrepresents the actual sizes of the world’s continents.

On Sept.

With 164 countries voting in favour, one against, and six abstentions, the UN adopted a landmark resolution that calls for phasing out the classic Mercator projection in official, educational, and public contexts.

Also, it voted in favour of equal-area map projections that accurately represent the true physical dimensions of Africa and the Global-South.

Spearheaded by Togo on behalf of the African Union and backed by a broad coalition of civil society groups, supporters say the decision marks a pivotal moment.

Robert Dussey, Togo’s Foreign Minister, said: “For over four centuries, the world has viewed Africa through a distorted lens that diminished our physical footprint.

“This resolution is not merely about geometry; it is about dignity, historical accuracy, and ensuring that our youth see their continent as it truly exists.”

Tunde Familokun, a supporter of the resolution who termed the old map as “psychological colonialism”, said the resolution marked a victory for accuracy.

“The unanimous vote is a victory for accurate decisions in global diplomacy, educational reform, and cultural advocacy, because it confronts what scholars and diplomats have long described as cartographic psychological colonialism.”

To understand the necessity of the UN resolution requires a return to 1569, when Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator introduced his revolutionary world map.

An analysis of media content shows that Mercator created his projection primarily for maritime navigation.

He was said to keep lines of latitude and longitude at straight right angles so that sailors could plot straight-line compass bearings across long oceanic voyages.

However, flattening a spherical planet onto a two-dimensional plane requires mathematical trade-offs, and Mercator’s design distorts relative scale as landmasses stretch farther from the Equator toward the poles.

Put in plain terms, the map was deliberately designed (although inaccurately) for ease of navigation.

The implication under this inaccurate traditional Mercator grid, for instance, is that Greenland appears roughly equal in surface area to the entire continent of Africa.

However, in geographic reality, Africa covers approximately 30.3 million square kilometers, whereas Greenland covers 2.16 million square kilometers, making the African landmass roughly fourteen times larger.

Similar visual compression affects equatorial regions across South America, South Asia, and the Caribbean, while expanding the visual footprint of European and North American landmasses.

As European nations expanded global trade networks and formal education systems over subsequent centuries, Mercator’s specialised nautical chart gradually transformed into the default world map for classrooms, news broadcasts, atlases and digital applications.

In recent years, momentum to challenge this convention has been organised around the global #CorrectTheMap campaign.

Championed by pan-African advocacy platforms such as Africa No Filter and Speak Up Africa, civil society groups argued that maps are not neutral geometric diagrams but active tools that shape cultural perception.

Advocates emphasised that when generations of children grow up seeing their home continent visually diminished, it subtly reinforces geopolitical biases and underestimates the continent’s demographic weight, environmental stewardship, and economic resource scale.

The diplomatic push finally culminated at the UN General Assembly, where Robert Dussey formally introduced the draft resolution on behalf of AU member states.

The resulting vote reflected strong global alignment, with 164 member states voting in favour, the U.S. casting the single opposing vote, and six nations: Estonia, Georgia, Lithuania, Moldova, Serbia, and Ukraine, abstaining.

It is important to note that, as a General Assembly resolution, the measure functions as a non-binding policy recommendation rather than an absolute prohibition.

Experts say it does not ban Mercator-based nautical or aviation systems where directional angle accuracy remains essential.

Rather, the initiative encourages member states, textbook publishers, software developers, and international media organisations to adopt equal-area map templates for general public reference, classroom instruction and diplomatic documents.

Familokun provided further insights.

“The principal model endorsed by the UN resolution is the Equal Earth projection, developed in 2018 by cartographers Bojan Šavrič, Tom Patterson, and Bernhard Jenny.

“It was specifically to overcome the visual distortions of older cartographic systems, as the Equal Earth projection maintains accurate proportional land sizes across all continents.

“It also preserves natural continental shapes, avoiding the severe vertical stretching associated with earlier equal-area models like the Gall-Peters projection,” he said.

Reactions across the African continent were swift and celebratory, with political leaders and diplomats framing the vote as a vital milestone in historical reconciliation and spatial equity.

Representatives from the AU observed that presenting true geographical proportions reinforces regional development frameworks like Agenda 2063.

They said it would strengthen local self-reliance and encourage balanced international partnerships.

In fact, following the adoption, Togo announced plans to immediately incorporate Equal Earth wall maps and updated geography curricula into its national school system.

Civil society organisations that spearheaded campaign mobilisation also celebrated the resolution as a major milestone.

Representatives from Africa No Filter highlighted that altering the visual baseline of world geography plays an essential role in shifting broader international narratives surrounding Africa.

They also said the move would ensure future generations evaluate the continent based on physical reality rather than cartographic habit.

Educational cartographers commended the choice of the Equal Earth projection, noting its ability to balance mathematical area accuracy with clear visual aesthetics suitable for modern classrooms.

Conversely, the proceedings leading to the adoption of the resolution reflected distinct views regarding international governance and cartographic standards.

Delegations that abstained or opposed the measure voiced concerns regarding the precedent of an international political body endorsing specific map formats.

They maintained that textbook selection, educational software guidelines and cartographic choices should remain within national domestic jurisdictions.

Some professional geographic organisations also noted that classroom instruction should ideally teach students how to analyse different map projections critically rather than treating any single flat rendering as absolute perfection.

They said every flat map projection, whether Equal Earth or the Mercator grid, must compromise between area, shape, distance or direction.

There are also some opposers of the resolution who believe that Africa should focus more on the issues that matter to the continent, rather than how it’s being projected on a map.

Joy Ameh, a civil society worker, asked whether the continent is the biggest or smallest.

We are the poorest continent and come last in every development index, yet our concern is about a map?” he queried.

The practical implications of the resolution are expected to unfold across education, media, and digital technology over the coming years.

Educational ministries throughout Africa and supporting nations are preparing revised textbook publishing standards to ensure classroom atlases and wall maps reflect equal-area proportions.

Also, tech developers and software engineers face growing interest from educational institutions and public agencies to offer equal-area defaults across digital mapping applications.

For neutrals, replacing a centuries-old navigational habit with accurate proportional representation ensures that future generations will view Africa and the world through a clearer, more balanced lens. (NAN)

By Ismail Ahmed

In August, the Kano State Government, in northwestern Nigeria, supported 1,500 couples through its Auren Gata mass-wedding programme, with beneficiaries drawn largely from low-income and vulnerable groups, including widows and divorcees.

The number of couples that are married in social (mis)adventures like this is an output. The number of households that are safe, economically resilient, healthy, and able to educate their children years later is the outcome. The output is easy to measure; the outcome should hold our attention; and uncertainty around outcomes fuels much of the criticism directed at programmes like this one.

Moving Beyond the Wrong Argument

The public debate around mass weddings is often trapped between celebration and condemnation. Beneficiaries (both direct and indirect) and supporters see the programmes as culturally appropriate assistance to people who cannot afford the cost of marriage. Critics see scarce public resources devoted to ceremonies in states facing insecurity, unemployment, poor health outcomes, malnutrition, and large numbers of out-of-school children. For Kano State, in this context, bar the routine deeply endemic phone theft, especially within the city, the state has been relatively safe from major crimes like kidnapping and banditry that have afflicted several other states in northern Nigeria. However, the state has some of the poorest health indices in the country, with maternal mortality, for instance, exceeding 1,000 per 100,000 live births in some of its local government areas. The state also has one of the highest numbers of out-of-school children in the country.

The conversation across most quarters, therefore, has been whether the Kano State government gotten its priorities right.

A more useful policy conversation begins by avoiding an unsupported causal claim: mass weddings do not, by themselves, “create poverty.” Many beneficiaries are selected precisely because they are already experiencing economic vulnerability. Finding that some remain poor after marriage would not prove that the programme made them poor; that would confuse the criteria used to select beneficiaries with the effects of the intervention.

But the opposite assumption is equally weak. A successful ceremony, the distribution of furniture, and even the survival of a marriage do not by themselves prove that the intervention improved family welfare.

The right question is not whether mass weddings are inherently good or bad. It is whether public support changes the trajectory of beneficiary households, and whether it does so more effectively than alternative or complementary forms of social investment.

This is not an argument for abolishing mass weddings. It is an argument for reviewing and enhancing the policy.

More Than a Decade of Weddings Should Produce Evidence

Kano’s modern state-supported programme dates to 2012, when an initial group of 100 widows and divorced women took part in a government-backed mass wedding; subsequently, additional numbers were supported. Larger rounds followed, including 1,500 couples in 2019, about 1,800 in 2023 and another 1,500 in 2026. Whether Kano was literally the first Nigerian state to adopt such a programme matters less than the fact that it has now run for more than a decade. Enough time has passed to move beyond anecdote.

Kano is also not alone. Kebbi sponsored a mass wedding for more than 300 couples in 2024, combining dowry support with health screening and proposed skills training. In April, Zamfara sponsored 100 couples from vulnerable groups, providing dowry payments, household items and small business support. State-backed marriage assistance has become a recognisable form of social intervention across parts of northern Nigeria, strengthening the case for a common evaluation framework.

One of the few published assessments of Kano’s early mass-wedding programme provides an important starting point. A 2015 study by Rohana Yusof and Amina Lawal Mashi surveyed 200 women randomly selected from the first 350 women who had participated in the programme in July 2012 and interviewed six officials of Hisbah Board, a state authority responsible for enforcing morals among residents of Kano State and under whose watch all the mass weddings were organised. The authors reported broad acceptance of the programme and perceived economic benefits.

Notably, 43 per cent of the women surveyed identified their husbands’ abandonment of marital responsibilities – including feeding, shelter and children’s education – as a major factor in marriage breakdown. The Hisbah officials interviewed reportedly regarded “crippling poverty amongst couples” as an important underlying factor in the husbands’ inability to discharge basic responsibilities. The study subsequently recommended greater investment in women’s education and productive skills. Yet the study was an early cross-sectional assessment, not a long-term impact evaluation. More than a decade later, the unanswered question is therefore not whether beneficiaries welcomed the intervention, but what became of the families it helped to establish.

The next generation of evidence must answer harder questions: How many marriages from 2012, 2019 and 2023 cohorts remained intact after one, three and five years? How many remained safe and mutually supportive? Did the businesses financed through the programme survive? Did women retain control over the grants provided to them? Did household income, savings and food security improve? Were children from these marriages registered at birth, immunised, and enrolled in school? If this information has already been collected, it should be published in anonymised form. If it has not, the 2026 cohort offers an opportunity to begin.

Ismail Ahmed is a public health physician and social commentator with decades of experience designing and implementing developmental programmes across Nigeria.

By Uddin Ifeanyi

Against the backdrop provided by the incumbent government’s professed ambitions for the country, the 4.43 per cent by which the economy grew on an annualised basis in the second quarter of this year is far from the kind of high-productivity growth trajectory that the country needs.

In the last twenty years, the economy has skittered between the low (about 2—3 per cent average annual growth rates) of the last decade, in which growth was too tepid to raise living standards, even as population growth pressures prevailed, and periods before that, when high oil prices and investment booms produced bursts of 6—7 per cent average annual growth rates. The lessons from the limited reforms put in place by the Tinubu administration go beyond the fact that they have been able to nudge the economy towards a semblance of recovery from yesterday’s economic lassitude. These lessons matter more in our present circumstances as an admonitory codicil to the government’s current medium-term aspiration of a 7 per cent trend growth rate for the economy.

While this higher growth rate is necessary if the economy is to get ahead of population growth and raise living standards, our policy establishment cannot forget that successive governments in the country have struggled to convert growth episodes into sustained, productivity-driven expansion. Against The Renewed Hope Development Plan’s (2026—2030) goals of diversification, productivity, human capital, and private sector-led growth, therefore, the most encouraging part of the second quarter 2026 growth numbers is the extent to which the economy has moved beyond crude oil-led growth. The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) reports that the non-oil economy (up 4.31 per cent in Q2 this year) accounted for 95.84 per cent of real domestic output.

Yet, the fact that the economy is no longer waiting for crude oil production to rescue aggregate output, does not mean that it has been transformed. What to make of the fact that industry growth slipped from 7.46 per cent in the second quarter of last year to 3.96 per cent in the same period this year? Or that manufacturing was up 3.24 per cent in real terms in the second three months of this year, while its share of domestic output fell from 7.81 per cent to 7.72 per cent year-on-year? Or that real electricity, gas, steam output contracted by 10.63 per cent?

There are two possible responses to these questions. The first one invites us to recognise a major dilemma confronting efforts to reform this economy. And that is that an economy cannot sustainably grow at a trend rate of 6—7 per cent annually if one of its fundamental productive inputs — reliable electricity — is shrinking. The second describes the main deliverable of successful reforms to the way this economy is run: if the Nigerian economy is to transit from its current low-income/low-productivity level to the sort of place envisaged by Nigeria Agenda 2050, industry must become the main transmission mechanism between agriculture and the services sector.

Which of these (the dilemma confronting and the goal of reforms) does the decomposition of the growth story told by the Q2 2026 GDP numbers help? Here, if you separated the beautiful parts of the growth narrative, especially telecommunications and information services from the rest, the picture you are left with is more of an economy recuperating across a broad front with a few highly dynamic modern sectors pulling the average up, rather than one going through a dramatic productivity boom.

The fact that despite its impressive growth outcomes in the most recent report on the economy’s performance, a quarter of the economy (in agriculture) continues to produce at relatively low productivity levels, while employing a large proportion of Nigerians is worrisome. To boost per capita income, agricultural output must not only grow faster than 4 per cent annually, but we must also raise agricultural productivity dramatically and move the labour freed up by this process into economic sectors with higher returns to invested funds.

If nothing else, therefore, the domestic output numbers for the second quarter of this year show that the structural transformation problem that the economy has long faced, and which the Nigeria Agenda 2050 pays eloquent lip-service to has not been resolved. Thus, while there are three reasons from the report to remain upbeat about the economy’s trajectory (acceleration of growth, strengthening of the non-oil economy, and oil production recovery), there are four arguably weightier reasons for worry (growth is still beyond the trend rate that we all know is necessary for the economy’s sustainable development, industry is losing momentum, the manufacturing sector’s underperformance is worrying, and we cannot ignore the fact that electricity is shrinking).

All of this leads to the one question that accompanied me through every page of the report: Is Nigeria’s economy now growing faster because the reforms put in place by the incumbent federal government have removed the macroeconomic constraints on growth, or is it growing faster because the economy is recovering from the extraordinary disruption of the Buhari/Emefiele diarchy?

Uddin Ifeanyi, a journalist manqué and retired civil servant, can be reached @IfeanyiUddin.