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By Daberechi K. Ekejiuba
On 8 September 2026, on a typical Singapore afternoon, I sat with open ears and an open mind at a panel titled “Small States Success: Singapore and Switzerland Navigating Through Turbulent Times,” held at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore.
It was my first such event since arriving in Singapore for graduate studies.
The event offered a spectrum of people and ideas, with Ms Carmen Walker Späh, President of the Government Council of Zurich; H.E. Alexandra Baumann, Swiss Ambassador to Singapore and Brunei Darussalam; Professor Reto Steiner, Dean of the ZHAW School of Management and Law; Professor Kishore Mahbubani, Distinguished Fellow at the Asia Research Institute, NUS, and former President of the United Nations Security Council; and Professor Joseph Chinyong Liow, current Dean of LKYSPP, moderating the conversation (Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, 2026).
During the Q&A session, I asked about the geopolitical implications of the UN›s “Correct the Map” resolution, for which Singapore and Switzerland had voted in favour. Four days earlier, on 4 September 2026, the UN General Assembly had voted 164 to 1, with six abstentions, to adopt the resolution—an initiative led by Togo and the African Union to promote more accurate representations of the relative sizes of the world›s regions, particularly Africa (United Nations General Assembly, 2026).
My question was simple: what does such a diplomatic victory mean, geopolitically, for a continent that had just secured a rare near-unanimous vote at the world›s centre of common ground? Professor Mahbubani›s response was characteristically unsentimental.
As I understood his broader point, the development was more symbolic than substantial, and developing economies should be wary of political pronouncements that carry little corresponding economic benefit. Leaders must learn to see beyond the semantics and solve the underlying economic problems, as Singapore and Switzerland have done and continue to do. Professor Steiner›s response reinforced a similar point: political pronouncements are of limited consequence when they are not followed by economic substance.
I have spent the days since turning that exchange over in my mind and have come to the conclusion that both scholars are right in context—and that their rightness is precisely the point this article seeks to press further into Africa›s own history, opportunities and unfinished economic business.
Advocacy against the Mercator projection is not new. In May 1973, German historian, Arno Peters, presented his equal-area world map to the public at a press conference in Bonn, attended by television reporters and about 350 journalists. Peters argued that conventional world maps reinforced distorted perceptions of the developing world by exaggerating the apparent size of higher-latitude regions relative to equatorial ones (Kretschmer, 2015).
The intervention generated enormous public debate at the time. Development organisations and other socially conscious groups adopted the Peters map, while professional cartographers challenged both his claims of originality and the suitability of his projection as a general-purpose world map. In 1989, major North American geographic and cartographic organisations jointly recommended against the general-purpose use of rectangular world maps, including both Mercator and Gall-Peters (Committee on Map Projections, 1989; Robinson, 1990).
So much debate over a single geographical drawing, a distant observer might say. But that earlier episode was, by any fair reading, a symbolic triumph. It pushed the politics of cartography into public consciousness and forced a wider conversation about how maps shape perceptions of the world. Yet the five decades between Peters› 1973 intervention and Togo›s 2026 initiative were not, for most of Africa, decades of commensurate social and economic transformation.
The messaging was loud. But the advocacy did not, by itself, improve trade balances, expand the continent›s industrial base or guarantee African states greater influence at the tables where rules governing debt, trade, technology and global finance are made.
This, I believe, is the historical rationale behind Professor Mahbubani›s caution.
A continent can win the argument about how it is drawn and still lose the argument about how it is priced, financed and industrialised.
That is not a reason to dismiss the 2026 resolution. It is a reason to treat it as round two of an unfinished contest—and to ask what round one should have taught us.
Where I want to extend, rather than contradict, the panellists› view is on the question of whether the symbolic and the substantial are as separable as their responses might imply. The UN resolution itself does not treat cartographic distortion as trivial. It recognises that “cartographic distortions of continental sizes inherited from history have cognitive, educational, cultural, geopolitical and socioeconomic impacts and constitute historical biases” (United Nations General Assembly, 2026, p. 3).
Togo›s Foreign Minister, Robert Dussey, captured the argument succinctly on the day of the vote: “A fair map does not change the geography of the world, it changes how we see the world” (Office of the Special Adviser on Africa, 2026). Symbolism therefore matters. Maps do not merely describe physical space; they can influence how societies perceive scale, centrality and geographical importance.
Beyond perception, accurate cartographic and geospatial information also has practical implications for security operations. The U.S. Army Geospatial Centre notes that “standardized maps and charts, feature data, elevation data, and imagery” form its Standard Shareable Geospatial Foundation and “are essential for a Common Operational Picture” (U.S. Army Geospatial Center, n.d.).
The implications extend to governance. The World Bank describes digital geospatial information and mapping services as “critical for evidence-based decision-making and good governance,” noting the importance of authoritative location information to governance decisions (World Bank, 2018, p. 23).
Whereas a corrected map, on its own, changes nothing about Abuja›s income per capita, Lusaka›s cost of capital, or Nairobi›s youth unemployment, African governments can leverage credible geospatial data to strengthen governance and improve decision-making.
The inherent risk is not in the symbolism of the UN’s near-unanimous vote—it is Africa mistaking the applause for the work and suffocating the opportunity with noise.
A corrected map endorsed by the UN in 2026 will not, by itself, close the structural gaps in the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), nor will it accelerate the delivery of the African Union›s Agenda 2063 priorities.
According to the International Trade Administration, 54 African countries have signed the AfCFTA agreement, and 50 (92.6 per cent) have ratified it. Yet, as of December 2025, only 25 countries had completed the process required to operationalise their Schedules of Tariff Concessions (International Trade Administration, 2026).
Recent data underscore the scale of the challenge. In 2025, intra-African exports accounted for only 17 per cent of Africa›s total exports, compared with 63 per cent for intra-Asian exports and 67 per cent for intra-European exports (UN Trade and Development, 2026).
These are not merely trade statistics. They describe how much economic value Africa continues to leave unrealised between its own borders. The real question, therefore, is whether the same institutional discipline that led to the UN resolution can be reproduced where the economic stakes are higher.
This brings me back to Singapore and Switzerland. Their lesson for Africa is not that small countries possess some inherent advantage. Nor is it that their histories, institutions or circumstances can simply be transplanted onto 54 vastly different African states. Rather, it is the realisation that geographic scale does not automatically translate into geopolitical influence.
In 2025, Africa›s 54 economies had a combined nominal GDP of approximately US$3.15 trillion and a population of about 1.54 billion people, based on World Bank data (World Bank, 2026a, 2026b).
Singapore and Switzerland, by contrast, with a combined population of just over 15 million people, recorded nominal GDPs of approximately US$604 billion and US$1.04 trillion, respectively—a combined US$1.65 trillion, equivalent to more than half of Africa›s total nominal GDP. The contrast becomes even more striking when considered on a per-capita basis (World Bank, 2026a, 2026b).
Singapore›s trajectory has rested on an institution-focused combination: political stability, long-term orientation, meritocracy, low corruption, investment in human capital and infrastructure, openness to trade and foreign investment, and intentional state leadership (Ministry of Finance Singapore, 2026; Singapore Economic Development Board, 2026).
Switzerland, on the other hand, has built strong international influence through institutional stability, advanced manufacturing and financial services, research and innovation, specialised human capital, and its longstanding role as a centre of international diplomacy (OECD, 2024; Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, 2024, p. 2).
Their experiences are not identical, and neither provides a template that Africa can simply copy, but they demonstrate that size only matters when it enhances productive capacity.
Meeting this challenge calls for keener attention to what I would call Africonomics: a disciplined effort to convert Africa›s demographic, geographic and diplomatic weight into productive economic capacity.
Africonomics requires intentional political leadership that enables innovation, investment and production; equips Africa›s young population for an increasingly just global workforce; strengthens institutions and regional markets; corrects, rather than compounds, market failures; and moves African economies up global value chains.
Above all, it requires statesmanship. It requires Africa to be more forward-looking than backward-looking. The lesson of 4 September 2026 should therefore not be treated as a finish line. It is closer to a starting gun.
In the end, it is not about who owns most of the world. It is about who creates the most with what history and nature bequeaths them.
•Daberechi Kingsley Ekejiuba, a Master in Public Administration (MPA) candidate, writes from Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore.
