Aminata Sheriff: Sierra Leone Telegraph: 7 September 2026:
I woke up to the celebratory news about the UN approving a resolution on how Africa is represented on world maps, and I’m genuinely baffled by our priorities. I look at our own African diplomats and leaders – the people who spent months drafting, lobbying and pushing this “Correct the Map” initiative in New York – and I can’t help feeling deeply frustrated by how they choose to spend their time, political energy and our continent’s precious diplomatic capital.
Togo and the AU have just put an enormous amount of effort into getting 164 countries at the UN General Assembly to agree that Africa should be represented at its proper geographical scale. And somehow, we’re expected to celebrate this as a historic victory.
But let’s put this cartographic triumph alongside our actual position on the global stage.
When it comes to securing permanent African representation, with real power, on the UN Security Council, we are met with deadlock. Africa remains locked out of the rooms where some of the world’s most consequential decisions are made, yet we’re supposed to celebrate because the world has finally agreed that our continent should look bigger on a classroom wall.
I have to ask: does changing the size of Africa on a map actually change our reality?
Does drawing Africa bigger on a piece of paper increase the territory of a single African country? Will it resolve the border disputes tearing communities apart? Will it put food on anyone’s table? Will it strengthen our institutions, protect human rights or restore dignity to people living under failed governance? Of course it won’t.
In my own work, I’ve spent a lot of time working with Asian counterparts, and the contrast in approach is glaring. They don’t sit around begging for symbolic acknowledgement or waiting for the West to validate their footprint. They occupy space through cold, hard, practical action.
They build economies. They secure supply chains. They dominate manufacturing. They invest in infrastructure, technology and human capital. They make themselves impossible to ignore through sheer capability.
They didn’t ask the UN to redraw them. They helped redraw the global economic and political order themselves. And yet here we are, with parts of our leadership seemingly consumed by the symbolism of a drawing.
Meanwhile, across our continent, people are dealing with hunger, systemic corruption, indignity, conflict and relentless human rights violations. What actual value does a corrected outline have when fundamental rights and human dignity remain under constant threat back home?
And why, on this God-given earth, have we convinced ourselves that we need Western validation to prove who we are?
I know we’re living in an era of grandstanding and pointless projects, often enthusiastically backed by some of the most uninspired people among us. But celebrating the size of Africa on a map while our people continue to pay the price for failed governance takes the absurdity to another level.
I don’t need Africa to look bigger on a map. I want Africa to be bigger where it actually matters. Bigger in global trade. Bigger in manufacturing. Bigger in innovation. Bigger in diplomacy. Bigger in economic power. Bigger in the defence of human rights. Bigger in the quality of life we provide our people.
We don’t need a bigger outline. We need real leadership, structural justice, fairer trade, functioning institutions and the restoration of human dignity. That would be a victory worth celebrating. For once in this lifetime, let’s show some seriousness as a people.
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