Wilma Nchito has been teaching map making for 30 years and has shown thousands of students the science behind how to draw maps to better display locations and features.
She always looks back on her career with pride, but a few years after she retired, she saw a video online that shook her faith in her work.
Get a big wahala by saying you’ve been teaching for years using world maps in video talks. It makes Africa look like it’s full of small countries.
“I think I said ‘na’ like six or seven years ago. Once I know, I like to say, ‘First of all, wait,’” Nchito Ito tells TRT Africa. “As someone who makes maps, it hurts a lot.”
The video shows how countries that appear larger than Africa on regular maps actually move inside the continent with still space left. As Nchito talks about, the only truth we hide to open our eyes.
wrong projection
The Mercator projection, created in the 16th century and still popular today, can make Africa appear smaller.
With an area of 30.3 million square kilometers, Africa is the second largest continent after Asia’s 44 million square kilometers. Sometimes it spans six time zones. Thirty countries such as the United States, India, Japan, China, Iraq, and many European countries are allowed inside Africa.
However, in the Mercator projection, when you pass through some countries, it actually looks smaller.
“The size of the map of Africa is incorrect,” said Mokye Makula, executive director of Africa No Filter. “This is the world’s longest running misinformation and disinformation campaign, so it needs to stop.”
So why do people like Nchito Wei Sabi Di forget about work for so many years? She blames the colonial education system for not telling the truth about the map of Africa.
“The sad reality of our colonial history is different. Our education is not colonial education. The books I use are not about learning cartography, they are not about what our people write. Yes, they go talk about the truth, but for open eyes they can hide. As cartographers say projection, we cannot show the real size,” says Nchito.
Now, let’s make the map and make the cover inside.
Distortion becomes an issue when you want to change the shape of the world from 3D to 2D. The cartographers rust one, they teach me, and they go waka.
propaganda tools
The various distortions caused by the Mercator projection are not mathematical errors.
Professor Murat Tanrukul, a geography lecturer at Turkiye Cankur Karatekin University, said that people have used maps as propaganda tools since ancient times.
Nchito agrees: “I want people to spend time on history because they lie when they use maps.” “In order to create vast tracts of land, a country tells big lies and conquers big mountain passes. In the case of Africa, I wouldn’t feel lonely if they did it on purpose, but it’s true that the map matched the lie.”
Traces of Tanlukul were of interest to Western cartographers as they traveled to Africa to reach Mansa Musa, the ruler of Mali, and during his historic pilgrimage to Mecca in 1324.
“Carrying 60,000 people for the journey, 2,000 soldiers. Carrying 80 camels of gold, each taking 300 kg of gold. A total of 24,530 tons of gold,” explains e.
A story spread that Mansa Musa distributed gold as the waka passed through the town from Mali to Saudi Arabia. Western cartographers began drawing maps called “Mansa Musa maps.”
“Draw a Musa with a golden scepter and a golden throne for one atlas,” Tanrukul says.
Merchants go to meet in the morning, but they are attracted by wealth. “Africa will suddenly become known and then the continent will be invaded, occupied and exploited,” says the geography lecturer.
At the Berlin Conference in 1884, Wetin Tanrukul called for the “peaceful sharing of Africa by Western brothers.”
