No amount of cartographic precision can make up for walls that fail to stand. Faure has drawn attention to a map reflecting the continent’s true surface area, earning a visible communications victory. The symbol may resonate and the pan-African message may appeal, but behind this cartographic display the brutal reality is impossible to ignore: Togo’s largest public secondary school is deteriorating amid widespread neglect.

A nation cannot be measured solely by how it appears on a map. It is also judged by the condition of its schools, the quality of its classrooms, the safety of its pupils and the circumstances in which its teachers work. That is precisely where the contrast becomes most uncomfortable for the authorities: correcting the proportions of a continent on a world map may take only a few hours, but repairing a school demands decisions, budgets and, above all, political will.

On the ground, pan-African rhetoric collides with the daily reality of an abandoned youth. Thousands of pupils crowd each morning into dilapidated rooms, without decent materials, under roofs that threaten to give way at the slightest rainfall. In these establishments the issue is far from theoretical. It directly affects children’s safety, the quality of their learning and, ultimately, their chances of building a future.

The true starting point of pan-Africanism should be the classroom. African youth will not regain dignity simply because Africa appears larger on a map. Dignity will return when children can study in secure buildings, with access to textbooks, laboratories, libraries, digital equipment and properly supported teachers.

The contrast therefore raises a fundamental question about the state’s sense of priorities: how can one claim to restore a people’s pride on the international stage while denying children the minimum conditions for learning? What use is ambitious pan-African communication if, at the same time, the infrastructure meant to prepare the next generation for that ambition is falling into ruin?

There is also a political dimension that a mere cartographic symbol cannot erase. A rundown school is not simply a poorly maintained building. It is the visible result of a series of budgetary choices, administrative priorities and public decisions. When an establishment attended by thousands of pupils deteriorates to the point of serious concern, the question is no longer only who should carry out repairs, but why maintenance and renovation were not anticipated.

Education should be among the first investments of any state that claims to be preparing for the future. Every year spent in inadequate infrastructure potentially represents thousands of lost learning hours, eroding motivation and widening inequalities. Children from the most modest families are the first to pay the price, since they rarely have alternatives when the public service declines.

The problem therefore extends well beyond cracked walls, ageing roofs or poorly equipped rooms. It touches the contract between the state and its youth. What is a government telling its children when it asks them to believe in the future while offering study conditions that belong to the past?

A serious public policy should also be judged on its capacity to produce visible results in everyday life. Inaugurations, maps, speeches and major announcements can feed the political narrative. But the voter, the parent and above all the pupil ultimately look at what is in front of them: a classroom, a roof, a blackboard, a chair, a textbook, a teacher and acceptable safety conditions.

This is not, of course, about opposing recognition of Africa’s true surface area to the construction of schools. It is about recalling an obvious truth: symbols must never become a substitute for public policies. A state can simultaneously defend an ambitious pan-African vision and invest heavily in its school infrastructure. One should never serve to mask the absence of the other.

Restoring Africa to its proper size on a world map costs only a pencil stroke. Giving thousands of children a school worthy of the name, by contrast, requires substantial funds, planning, oversight and lasting political will. That difference is what gives this situation its full weight.

True national greatness cannot be read solely on a map. It is visible in the schools a country builds, in the children it protects and in the means it grants its youth to succeed.

By favouring the brilliance of symbols at the expense of education, the regime is not correcting history: it risks mortgaging the future. A map can reshape how we see Africa. It cannot, on its own, build a classroom, secure a roof or give a child the means to succeed.

The real pan-African struggle therefore begins where cameras are fewer: in the classrooms, where the Africa of tomorrow is actually being built.