A US government map of Africa displayed during a State Department presentation at a global conference in Brazil this week mislabeled every country, causing widespread criticism online. Reuters reviewed a video of the presentation at the Aids 2026 conference in Rio de Janeiro, which showed the erroneous map midway through a talk on new health agreements.
Map errors and AI watermark
The map depicted Nigeria, where the US has several hundred troops deployed, as landlocked in the Sahara desert. Mozambique, located in southeastern Africa, was relocated to the Horn of Africa, while Côte d’Ivoire in West Africa was placed on the opposite side of the continent. A Reuters analysis found the image contained an artificial intelligence watermark indicating it was made with OpenAI tools. OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment.
State Department response
The State Department said it took “full responsibility” for the confusion and misrepresentation caused to attendees, including African partners. The map was produced by a team member who hastily changed the slide deck before the event. The speaker was Jeff Graham, the top US health envoy overseeing Pepfar (President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief). He did not reply to requests for comment.
Screenshots of the map first appeared in a Substack post by Aids expert Emily Bass and were widely shared on LinkedIn, with one post garnering about 40,000 views. “Whoever created and approved this slide did not know where countries in Africa are and did not care to check their work,” wrote Matt Petit, who focuses on AI and geopolitics at the Atlantic Council, in the post.
Impact on Aids programs
The State Department said discussions at the conference were “substantive and constructive” despite the map and reaffirmed commitment to fighting Aids with real results. The Trump administration’s decision last year to pause funding pending a review disrupted aid programs worldwide, but Pepfar’s core work, including life-saving drugs, has largely resumed. The US is scaling back other areas such as prevention and surveillance and plans to fully phase out the program in South Africa.
