By Claire Mom

A map displayed by the United States at the Aids 2026 conference in ⁠Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, has drawn attention after incorrectly labelling several African countries during a presentation.

TheCable understands the error occurred during a US government presentation by Jeff Graham, top US health envoy who oversees the president’s emergency plan ​for Aids Relief (Pepfar), at the pre-conference meeting on Sunday.

The presentation, titled “Transforming health assistance: Implementing US government MOUs for sustainable HIV programs”, was aimed at providing an overview of the America first global health strategy and the status of US government memorandums of understanding (MOUs) with partner governments, accompanying implementation plans, and governance structures.

High-level officials from African countries attended the meeting, including Temitope Ilori, director-general of Nigeria’s National Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA).

During the presentation, a map that mis-identified the locations of Cote d’Ivoire, Mozambique and Nigeria by significant margins was displayed.

Nigeria, a West African country, was placed as landlocked in the Sahara. Cote d’Ivoire, another West African country, was identified as a Southern African state, alongside Cameroon, which is a Central African nation.

The map placed Uganda and Malawi in the right vicinity but showed them with the incorrect borders.

A Reuters analysis found that the image of the map included ⁠in the presentation contained an artificial intelligence (AI) watermark indicating that it was made with OpenAI tools. The company did ​not respond to a request for comment.

The US state ‌department said it took “full responsibility” ‌for the confusion, adding that the map had been produced by a team member who hastily changed ‌the slide deck before the event.

Screenshots of the map first appeared in a Substack post by Emily Bass, an AIDS expert. Nigerian attendees at the conference also confirmed the incident to TheCable.

The ​state department said the discussions at the conference were “substantive and constructive” despite the map ​error, adding that it remained ‌committed to fighting AIDS and delivering real results.

Source: TheCable