US State Department apologizes for mislabeled Africa map

A U.S. State Department presentation at a global AIDS conference in Brazil displayed a map that mislabeled every country in Africa, drawing online criticism and prompting the department to accept responsibility for what it called confusion and misrepresentation.

The map appeared during a presentation this week at the AIDS 2026 conference in Rio de Janeiro, where Jeff Graham, the top U.S. health envoy overseeing the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, was speaking about the department’s new health agreements. Attendees recorded videos and screenshots of the slide and posted them online, where the image spread widely.

Reuters reviewed video of the presentation and reported that the map appeared midway through the State Department presentation. The news agency also found that the image contained an artificial intelligence watermark indicating it was made with OpenAI tools. OpenAI said it was investigating the report.

The map placed Nigeria, where the United States currently has several hundred troops deployed, as a landlocked country in the Sahara desert. Mozambique, which is in southeastern Africa, was moved to the Horn of Africa. Côte d’Ivoire, also known as Ivory Coast, was placed on the opposite side of the continent from its actual location in West Africa. Al Jazeera reported that the map’s boundaries appeared as indistinct blobs and did not represent real countries.

Screenshots first appeared in a Substack post by AIDS expert Emily Bass and were later shared widely on LinkedIn. One LinkedIn post received about 40,000 views, according to The Guardian. “Whoever created and approved this slide did not know where countries in Africa are and did not care to check their work,” Matt Petit, who focuses on AI and geopolitics at the Atlantic Council, wrote in the post.

The State Department acknowledged the error Thursday and said the map had been produced by a team member who hastily changed the slide deck before the event. “We take full responsibility for the confusion and misrepresentation it caused for attendees, including our African partners,” the department said in a statement.

The department said discussions at the conference were “substantive and constructive” despite the mislabeled map and said it remained committed to fighting AIDS with “real results.” Graham did not respond to requests for comment, according to The Guardian.

The presentation came as the Trump administration reshapes U.S. global HIV and AIDS funding. The administration paused funding last year pending a review, disrupting aid programs worldwide. PEPFAR’s core work, including the provision of life-saving antiretroviral drugs, has largely resumed. Before the pause, PEPFAR supported up to 20 million people around the world, especially in Africa, with antiretrovirals, Al Jazeera reported.

The United States is scaling back other areas of HIV spending, including prevention and surveillance, and plans to fully phase out the program in South Africa. Al Jazeera reported that South Africa has the world’s largest HIV burden. PEPFAR was launched under the George W. Bush administration.