Recently, we watched Togo lead the vote in the United Nations to replace the Mercator map, which has guided the world in a fiction since the 1600s, ushering Europe into the world of Empire and maintaining the illusion and reduction of Africa. It enabled a misrepresentation that was argued to have made sea travel easier, but not for raising children to be educated about global complexity in an increasingly multilateral world. The usual Western logic or sleight of hand that provides a simplistic tool that offers ease but proffers the submission of wisdom and represents humiliation.
Afrilition: Blackness and the challenge of restoring complexity to completeness, By Adéwálé Àjàdí
