I was very pleased to see that the UN have voted to adopt new world map to reflect Africa's true size
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce30vp55dnlo
The world map we see most often, the Mercator projection, greatly exaggerates the apparent size of Europe, and makes Africa appear much smaller than it is. The bias wasn't introduced on purpose, but it has suited the colonial purposes of European (and later, North American) powers to have a map which overstates their importance in the world. The solutions aren't new either: a predecessor of the UN's chosen 'Equal Earth' projection was published in the 1880s, if my memory serves.
I knew about the map problem intellectually, but it wasn't until my firrst trip to Rwanda that I properly got it. Flying from Brussels airport, we seemed to over the Med and into North Africa almost at once. And once we we were over Africa, my companions and I began to feel as if if we were almost there, only to look at the clock and realise that we had several hours still to go. There's no escaping it: Africa is BIG. Bigger and more diverse than most Europeans realise.
A map that helps to redress that has to be welcome.
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richard <AT> deckzero <DOT> uk