MOGADISHU, Somalia (AXADLE) — Somalia has been made larger in the world’s official imagination, but the shift has redrawn no borders and settled no claims.
On 4 September, the United Nations General Assembly voted 164 to 1 for a resolution urging states and institutions to move away from the 1569 Mercator projection and adopt true-to-scale options, including the Equal Earth map. Togo introduced the measure on behalf of Africa’s 54-member bloc, with African Union support. The United States cast the only vote against it, while six countries abstained.
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“Maps shape our understanding of the world,” Togo’s Foreign Minister Robert Dussey told the Assembly before the vote. Days later, France indicated it would remove Mercator from its school materials, among the earliest practical steps taken after the resolution.
The African Union has cast the effort in broader political and cultural terms, calling it a question of “cognitive justice” and linking it to the demand for “cartographic justice” raised at the ninth Pan-African Congress. In the AU’s framing, the campaign is about more than correcting distorted shapes. It is about challenging a centuries-old visual order that made equatorial Africa appear marginal because classroom walls, atlases, and official charts repeatedly presented it that way.
For 450 years, the Mercator projection has diminished land closer to the equator while exaggerating areas farther north. Somalia, positioned on Africa’s eastern edge, was reduced visually to a thin and easily overlooked strip attached to a shrunken continent. The best-known demonstration of that distortion was not focused on Somalia at all: Kai Krause’s widely shared 2010 “True Size of Africa” map showed that Africa could contain the United States, China, India, Japan, and most of Europe, with space remaining. The continent is about fourteen times larger than Greenland, not the near-peer comparison Mercator has suggested since 1569.
On an Equal Earth projection, Somalia’s appearance changes sharply. The adjusted view brings its actual geographic weight back into focus:
●Total Landmass: 637,657 square kilometers — more than double the size of Italy.
●Continental Coastline: Roughly 3,330 kilometers, making it the longest on mainland Africa.
●Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ): Over 830,000 square kilometers of the Indian Ocean and Gulf of Aden.
With the distortion removed, Somalia is easier to recognize for what geographers have long understood it to be: a state located beside one of the world’s most important maritime corridors, close to the shipping lanes that feed the Suez Canal.
The irony is that Somalia’s new visibility required no action from Mogadishu. More importantly, it has no effect on the far more consequential question of who exercises real control over the territory and coastline now displayed more accurately.
The Scramble for the Coastline: Ankara, Abu Dhabi, and the Sovereignty Gap
The coastline restored to full scale on the map also exposes the limits of Mogadishu’s authority at home. In the capital, Turkey’s Albayrak Group operates the main seaport under a multi-decade concession. That commercial role sits alongside a large Turkish security presence centered on Camp TURKSOM. Covering 400 hectares, Turkey’s biggest overseas military facility trains and equips Somali forces under a bilateral defense agreement extended through 2028. Turkish naval assets also patrol waters connected to offshore hydrocarbon survey areas and joint fishing ventures.
About four hundred kilometers to the north, in the self-declared republic of North Western State of Somalia, another outside power holds considerable influence. The United Arab Emirates’ DP World signed a 30-year concession in 2016 to upgrade Berbera’s deep-water port, in a project valued at up to $442 million. Ethiopia, which is landlocked, is seeking more than commercial access. Under a memorandum of understanding announced on 1 January 2024, North Western State of Somalia agreed to lease Ethiopia a 20-kilometer coastal strip for 50 years for the construction of a naval base, with Ethiopian recognition of North Western State of Somalia’s independence included in the bargain. Irro campaigned that year on reviewing the agreement; once in office, he adopted more careful diplomatic language rather than rejecting it outright. The deal was negotiated outside Mogadishu’s jurisdiction, and the federal government regards it as an act of aggression.
The contest around North Western State of Somalia is becoming more intense. In July, the French newspaper Le Monde reported, citing satellite imagery and unnamed sources, that the UAE was quietly building a large ammunition depot at Berbera’s airport for use by the United States and Israel. North Western State of Somalia’s President Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi “Irro,” elected in November 2024, has denied that any foreign military presence has formally taken shape there. But his August remarks pointed in another direction: he said his administration would welcome American and Israeli bases “if they are interested” — an unusually direct invitation from the leader of a territory Mogadishu continues to claim under Somali law.
None of these facts — Turkey’s base, the Emirati port role, or the reported ammunition depot — changes because of a corrected UN map. They exist on the ground, where the federal government’s influence is limited or absent.
Silicon Valley Cartography: When Corporate Tech Labels Redraw Borders
Outside the United Nations, a quieter but potentially more volatile mapping dispute is unfolding on digital platforms. Google Maps has changed its treatment of North Western State of Somalia twice in the past year. In September 2025, it reduced the displayed boundaries of North Western State of Somalia. In April 2026, it shifted again, restoring North Western State of Somalia’s historical borders and labeling it a “partially recognized state,” with Hargeisa identified as its capital. The updated display also includes Las Anod and other towns not currently controlled by North Western State of Somalia, a point Somali commentators quickly highlighted.
The April change came after Israel formally recognized North Western State of Somalia in December 2025, becoming the first UN member state to do so. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced and signed the declaration himself, describing it as a “historic moment.” Somalia, Egypt, Turkey, and Djibouti condemned the decision through their foreign ministers. More than twenty countries issued condemnations in total, and Somalia sought an emergency session of the UN Security Council. That diplomatic push has not altered Google’s design choice, which remains in place.
North Western State of Somalia has also looked beyond Google. In April, a North Western State of Somalia MP sent a letter to Elon Musk requesting that X add North Western State of Somalia as a separate country option in its identity verification system, allowing users to verify accounts without selecting “Somalia.” X has not replied.
Digital mapping, however, does not cut in only one direction. After the August 2023 liberation of Las Anod, local clan forces formed an interim administration that the Federal Government of Somalia formally recognized in August 2025 as the country’s sixth federal member state — the North Eastern State of Somalia (NES). Puntland State still contests the legitimacy of the North Eastern State over the same territory. That leaves three authorities claiming one stretch of land, with none of those disputes resolved by the UN vote that changed the appearance of the continent.
The lesson is difficult to miss: contemporary maps are shaped by military control, administrative reach, and at times the product decisions of technology companies in Silicon Valley — not simply by diplomatic victories in New York.
Scale Without Sovereignty
The Equal Earth resolution was not designed to mend Somalia’s internal divisions, and its sponsors did not present it that way. A more accurate projection cannot create power by itself. What it can do is remove a long-standing visual habit that helped make Africa appear smaller and less central than it is.
For Somalia, the distance between geographic scale and political sovereignty remains one of the defining problems of the modern state. The country has the physical assets associated with major geopolitical leverage — a vast coastline, access to maritime choke points, fisheries, and shipping routes that a more accurately represented Africa is expected to bring into sharper focus through initiatives such as the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).
But a continent-wide trade framework offers little to a state unable to secure its own frontiers. While foreign militaries shape defense, foreign companies run strategic ports, technology platforms influence border perceptions, and breakaway administrations negotiate basing rights, a larger image on the map carries limited practical force.
The international community has voted to correct how Africa is seen. Somalia is still confronting the harder question of who has the authority to determine how it is governed.
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About the Author
Ismail Abukar is Co-founder and Chairperson of the Organization for Prisoners’ Rights (OPR), an independent civil society organization based in Mogadishu, Somalia. He has conducted primary field research in Somalia for seven years covering prisoners’ rights, enforced disappearances, press freedom, and electoral corruption. His investigations have been published by African Arguments and Axadle. He holds an MA in International Law and Human Rights from the University for Peace (UPEACE). ORCID: 0009-0003-1435-3691 | [email protected] | opr.org.so
