U.S. says ‘error’ mislabelled every African country on AIDS conference map

The U.S. government on Thursday acknowledged an “unfortunate error” that led to a map of Africa with every single country mislabelled being shown at a global AIDS conference this week.

The mislabelled map was shown during a presentation at the AIDS 2026 Conference in Rio de Janeiro on the U.S. State Department’s new health program funding agreements with African nations, which are being reworked after the Trump administration reduced global aid last year.

Images of the map first appeared Sunday in a Substack post by AIDS expert and activist Emily Bass and were widely shared on LinkedIn. Reuters then viewed video of the presentation and published screenshots of the map in question.

The map shows Nigeria, a country on the West African coast, as landlocked in the northern Sahara Desert. Mozambique, on the southeast coast, is errantly labelled further north in the Horn of Africa, where Ethiopia actually is.

Although Uganda and Malawi are shown in roughly their real-life positions, their borders are completely redrawn, as are the other countries identified on the map.

The colours of each country also do not correspond with those of the country names connected to them. In one example, an orange label for Côte d’Ivoire — another West African country falsely shown as landlocked — connects to a green country on the other side of the continent.

“This was an unfortunate error caused by a team member who hastily altered the slide deck immediately before the presentation at the AIDS 2026 Conference,” a State Department spokesperson told Global News on background in an emailed statement.

“We take full responsibility for the confusion and misrepresentation it caused for attendees, including our African partners.”

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Reuters reported that its analysis found the image of the map included in the presentation contained an artificial intelligence watermark that signals it was made with OpenAI tools. The company told Reuters it was investigating.

The U.S. State Department spokesperson told Global News that “high-level delegations from a broad range of African countries” were present at the session, “countries we are working with closely to implement the America First Global Health Strategy’s vision of sustainable, country-owned health programs.”

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Despite the error-filled map, “The engagement in the room was substantive and constructive,” the statement added, “reflecting our ongoing relationship with recipient country governments as we work with them to actively shape how their own health programs are designed and resourced going forward.”

The Trump administration and Republican majorities in the U.S. Congress slashed foreign aid budgets last year and dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

Those moves, as well as a freeze on all foreign funding pending a review, disrupted the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, known as PEPFAR, which is credited for saving the lives of over 25 million people around the world with HIV since its creation in 2003.

PEPFAR’s core work, such as the provision of life-saving drugs, has largely resumed since last year’s actions, but the U.S. is scaling back other areas of its spending — including on HIV prevention and surveillance — and plans to fully phase out the program in South Africa.

At the AIDS Conference on Monday, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and health policy research firm KFF reported international government funding for global HIV responses plunged 25 per cent in 2025 from the year before.

UNAIDS separately reported that domestic HIV financing increased by four per cent, accounting for nearly 60 per cent of total HIV funding, “as countries worked to offset declines in international support.”

The findings led Winnie Byanyima, executive director of UNAIDS, to declare that “the era of relying on international aid is over,” while the conference itself said the global HIV response is under more “severe strain” than at any point since 2002, when funding began to be scaled up around the world.

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Canada’s international aid funding for programs related to HIV/AIDS fell from $243.5 million in 2023-24 to $207.5 million last year, according to government figures. Contributions to UNAIDS alone were slashed 70 per cent last year to $3 million.

Last November, Ottawa announced Canada’s first-ever cut to funding for the Global Fund, a major program for fighting infectious diseases in the world’s poorest countries, including HIV medications.

The $1.02 billion over the next three years is 17 per cent lower than Ottawa’s last contribution to the fund in 2022, and is part of $2.7 billion in cuts over four years to foreign aid announced in last fall’s federal budget.

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government argues the aid cut brings spending back in line with Canada’s pre-pandemic allocations.

The Trump administration says it has signed bilateral “America First” global health funding agreements with 34 countries, which U.S. officials say are meant to increase self-sufficiency, reduce “dependency” on U.S. funding and eliminate what it calls ideological priorities and waste in international assistance. The deals replace a patchwork of previous health agreements under USAID.

The U.S. State Department spokesperson said Thursday the agreements amount to over $14.3 billion in U.S. assistance and more than $9.6 billion in co-investment from recipient countries.

“The United States continues to combat HIV/AIDS globally and remains focused on delivering results through strong, accountable partnerships,” the spokesperson said.

Criticism of the mislabelled map has spread online since Bass’s post.

“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, posted on LinkedIn while sharing the article.

“That latter point means they also *did not care enough* about the subject matter to bother.”

Bass herself wrote the errors were not just “disrespectful to African collaborators” but also representative of a broader trend in U.S. health policy.

“There is no chance of a constructive, productive future for an American global health strategy that has such a loose relationship to the facts,” she wrote. “A baseline has to be set correctly for onward shifts to be assessed. A map has to be properly labeled for anyone to get where they’re going.”

—with files from Reuters and the Associated Press