Decolonizing perceptions about Africa

The Correct the Map resolution to promote map projections that more realistically reflect the true size of continents endorsed by the United Nations in New York at the beginning of September was a huge success for the African countries that led the campaign. In the General Assembly, 164 member states voted to encourage the use of Equal Earth projection and other equal-area maps instead of the 16th-century Mercator projection.

Robert Dussey, the foreign minister of Togo, which sponsored the Correct the Map campaign at the UN, spoke of a "feeling of pride."

Correct the Map is also supported by the African Union.

"Finally, Africa is fighting to regain its place in the community of nations," he told DW. "The place it has been reserved to this day is unfair. It does not correspond to Africa's reality, not in historical, geographical or economic terms."

Dussey made clear that the debate about global maps was also clearly about symbolically redrawing the maps of facts and knowledge, culture and identity and redressing misperceptions about political and economic realities and power.

Trump's US only state to reject UN resolution

The only UN member state that rejected the resolution was the United States, whose president Donald Trump has engaged in various acts of political symbolism, having issued orders for places to be renamed on maps which he would presumaby also like to redraw Trump has signed executive orders to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, and Lake Ontario as Lake America.

The UN resolution, meanwhile, is part of a broader, global trend, as French historian Romain Tiquet from the African Worlds Institute (IMAF) told DW.

"Since the late 2000s and early 2010s, there has been a great deal of debate about the decolonization of knowledge — in universities, museums and cultural institutions, as well as within social movements and civil society."

He said many questions were being explored: "Who established the categories through which we conceptualize the world? From which locations? And what power dynamics result from this? And cartography fits right into this context."

Mali breaks with former colonial power France

Many African states have also been trying to free the school systems from colonial influence, often for political reasons.

In October 2025, the Malian government decided to remove French history from the school curriculum. The decision was made to stop teaching about the French Revolution but to focus on Malian history and the other ancient West African kingdoms.

In just a few years, the country's military government has made a clean break with the former colonial power. Mali ended its military cooperation with France in 2022, and French soldiers began to withdraw from the country. Burkina Faso and Niger did the same and the three formed the Alliance of Sahel States in 2023.

Philemon Mtoi from Tumaini University Makumira in Tanzania said Mali had made an important step: "As a historian, I believe that a country without a strong understanding of its own history is like a country without clear leadership and direction. This decision is important because it seeks to strengthen patriotism and foster a stronger sense of national identity."

By investing in the research and preservation of African history, Mali — like Africa as a whole — was making a strong contribution to global scholarship, Mtoi explained.

He spoke of "reclaiming and documenting African histories from an African perspective" and said that this was not only "an act of decolonization" but also an "important step toward intellectual independence."

Mtoi said that many other African countries, such as Ghana, Namibia, South Africa and Kenya, had adopted a similar approach. He added that his own country, Tanzania, had also made major changes to the school curriculum recently. He said that "Tanzanian history and ethics" was now a compulsory subject that had replaced global history and that it would be taught in Swahili, the country's national language.

The historian warned, however, that knowledge of other countries and histories should not be erased. He said it was important to acquire a profound knowledge of significant events in global history, such as the French Revolution, but that this could be done at a later stage.

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#NotWaiting campaign to abolish stereotypes

School education in a formal setting is only one part of the puzzle. The non-profit Africa No Filter was one of the organizations behind the Correct the Map campaign. It works to challenge and change harmful narratives about Africa.

In a report titled "The cost of media stereotypes to Africa," it says that "Africa could be losing up to $4.2 billion (€3.6 billion) annually in inflated interest payments due to biased media coverage."

Francois Bouda, an officer for arts and culture at Africa No Filter, said that media outlets continued to portray Africa as being poor, corrupt and crisis-ridden. The new campaign #NotWaiting is meant to change this perception.

"We are addressing Africans because we, too, need to change the way we view the African continent. We've accepted the image of a continent incapable of taking care of itself, one that is poor and has no opportunities. We've internalized this and come to believe it, even though many positive things are happening. First of all there has to be an internal change," said Bouda.

How the Berlin Conference spurred the colonization of Africa

'Millions of ordinary people doing extraordinary things every day'

The #NotWaiting campaign is part of a larger movement, which aims to highlight positive developments and initiatives in Africa, to focus on political programs and actors, to counter crisis-reporting.

It comprises figures on the continent and in the diaspora, people who are "not waiting for an external hand to dictate what path to follow," said Bouda.

"This is good for Africans," he said, adding that there were many actors but that the only problem was that they "aren't visible."    

The campaign is about Africans themselves painting a positive picture of Africa as a continent on the move, about people sharing stories, which are not curated by international institutions or media outlets.

"We've been building all along," says a video clip to promote the campaign. "From village roads to crowded cities, across the 54 countries that make up the continent, millions of ordinary people doing extraordinary things every day."

This article, to which Sandrine Blanchard and Jean-Claude Abalo contributed, was originally written in German.