New York : The UN General Assembly has voted to replace the traditional Mercator projection based world map with one that more accurately reflects the size of Africa. The "Correct the Map" resolution, sponsored by Togo and backed by African Union (AU) members, passed with the support of 164 nations, including France and the UK. The US was the only nation to vote against it, while there were six abstentions.

The UN vote is non binding but will see changes to the maps used by institutions around the world. The Mercator map that has commonly been used since the 16th Century, has come in for criticism for showing Africa as being of similar in size to Greenland, even though it is actually 14 times larger.

The Mercator projection was designed in 1569 by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator to help European explorers navigate across the ocean. The distortion inside his map is a result of it being impossible to represent the surface of a globe on a two dimensional chart.

Ahead of Friday's vote, Togolese Foreign Minister Robert Dussey told news agency Reuters: "A fair world begins with a fair map." Eariler he told a UN briefing, ""A map is never neutral. It shapes perceptions, influences how the place of peoples and continents in the world is understood."

Meanwhile online campaign group #CorrectTheMap said, "You could fit the United States, China, India, Japan, Mexico and much of Europe into Africa and still have land to spare."

The vote is non binding but will see changes to maps used by institutions around the world.