Over the past few weeks, I have found myself in several debates and conversations with friends about the recent UN vote on world maps and Africa’s true size. The questions have been interesting, and sometimes blunt: Does making Africa look bigger on a map put money in anyone’s pocket? Does it fix our roads, pay our nurses or make us developed?
Somewhere in the middle of these conversations, I found an old article sitting in my drafts. I wrote it in 2013, titled “The African Story: Who Will Tell It?” It came from an experience in France that left me thinking about how Africa is seen, who gets to tell our story and what happens when we allow others to tell it for us.
More than a decade later, I find myself returning to the same question, but differently: What is the power of a narrative? And does the way Africa is seen have material consequences?
The honest answer to my friends’ first question is no. Nothing about Africa’s GDP changed the day the vote passed. No country suddenly became richer because Africa was represented at its more accurate size. But perhaps we are asking too much of a map. Its value is in what it tells us about perception, representation and the power to define ourselves.
Perception has a price
If we want an example of where perception can have a real price, look at how African economies are perceived and priced. A 2023 UNDP study estimated that African countries could save up to US$74.5 billion if sovereign credit ratings were based on less subjective assessments. Hippolyte Fofack has described the additional risk often attached to African economies as a “perception premium”, sometimes beyond what underlying fundamentals would suggest.
This does not mean fundamentals do not matter. They do. High debt, weak institutions, poor fiscal management, incomplete data and political uncertainty have real consequences. But numbers are also interpreted within narratives. Investors and lenders do not encounter a country as a spreadsheet alone; they encounter years of accumulated stories about its stability, institutions, prospects and risks. Narratives can therefore have a price.
Narratives can become institutions
Other countries have understood the importance of positioning themselves within the global story. In 2001, BRIC began as an investment framing for Brazil, Russia, India and China by a Goldman Sachs economist. Within years, those countries had turned the acronym into a political grouping, were meeting at leaders’ summits and eventually established the New Development Bank. A narrative created about them became something they could organise around.
China offers another example. For years, it worked to deepen the international use of the renminbi while undertaking reforms to meet the requirements of the international monetary system. In 2016, the IMF included the renminbi in its Special Drawing Rights basket alongside the US dollar, euro, Japanese yen and British pound. That did not happen simply because China told a good story; economic weight and reforms mattered. But China also consistently made the case that its place in the global financial architecture should reflect the role it had come to occupy.
The African Union’s permanent membership of the G20 in 2023 offers another example closer to home. A seat does not guarantee influence or outcomes. But there is a difference between being discussed in a room and sitting in that room when the rules are being discussed.
Africa organised and the world listened
This is what I think some of the commentary about the map has missed. Before asking what the map will do for Africa, perhaps we should notice what Africa did to get the map. Togo led an African campaign, the African Union backed it, the Bahamas joined as a partner, and 164 countries voted in favour. Whatever we think about the practical impact of changing a map, African countries organised around an issue, built a coalition and persuaded much of the world to support it.
That same muscle is needed on debt reform, climate finance, the UN tax convention and reform of global institutions. The world listened long enough to vote. For a continent still too often spoken about rather than listened to, that is NOT NOTHING.
From narrative to fundamentals
The real test is what happens after the symbolism. The planned launch of the African Credit Rating Agency (AfCRA) on 7 October 2026 therefore comes at an interesting moment. President Bola Tinubu of Nigeria framed the ask well: Africa is not asking for favourable ratings, but for fair ratings grounded in its economic fundamentals.
But fair ratings require fair evidence, and much of that is in our hands. If we want the world to price us by our fundamentals, our fundamentals must be visible, timely and credible. That means published budgets that match what is spent, audited accounts delivered on time, complete debt data, and statistics offices funded well enough to produce numbers investors trust. At the 2023 UNDP meeting in Washington, officials noted that for African countries, data is often missing or of poor quality.
An African rating agency cannot fix that for us, nor should its purpose be to simply give African countries better ratings. Its credibility will depend on assessing our economies fairly, including telling us uncomfortable truths when the fundamentals are weak. If we want fairer assessments, we must do the work that makes fair assessment possible.
We must be the first users
The same principle should apply to the map. If African countries have successfully argued that the way the continent is represented matters, then we must be the first users of the maps we fought for. They should begin to appear in our schools and textbooks, government offices and meeting rooms, universities, television studios and public institutions. Why not on passenger screens and route maps of African airlines? Not every map must be replaced. Different maps serve different purposes but where relative size matters, we should not continue reproducing the very image we have asked the world to reconsider. Narrative sovereignty must start at home.
Who will tell the African story?
Perhaps that is why finding my old article felt timely. In 2013, I was asking: Who will tell the African story? More than a decade later, the question has evolved. It is not just about who tells the story. It is about whether we understand the power of the stories that are told, whether we have the agency to challenge them, and whether our own actions provide evidence for the story we want to tell.
So, will a new map change Africa? On its own, NO. A map will not build a hospital, create jobs or balance a national budget. But perhaps that is asking too much of a map. What it can do is remind us that representation matters. What people repeatedly see, hear and believe about a place can shape how they engage with it. In diplomacy, investment and global finance, those perceptions can have consequences.
Africa therefore has work to do on both sides of the equation. We must challenge narratives that diminish or misrepresent the continent. But we must also fix the fundamentals that sometimes give those narratives somewhere to land.
We should not confuse changing the story with changing the reality. But neither should we pretend that the stories told about us have no bearing on the reality we are trying to change.
Perhaps the real power of narratives is not that they replace development, but that they can shape the environment in which development is financed, negotiated and imagined.
Author: Rachel Gyabaah
UNDP (2023), “More objective credit ratings could save billions for African countries’ development”;
IMF (2016), launch of the SDR basket including the Chinese renminbi.
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/addressing-the-perception-premium-for-sustainable-development-in-africa/ https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/21.10.07_Perception-premiums.pdf
