US State Department mislabels African nations on map at AIDS summit

Sonya Dymova, Bloomberg News on Jul 30, 2026

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The U.S. State Department presented a map of Africa that mislabeled every nation on the continent that it attempted to highlight at the International AIDS Conference in Brazil this week.

Nigeria, a vast country sitting on the Gulf of Guinea, was shown as a landlocked nation in the Sahara desert. Mozambique, whose Indian Ocean coastline stretches for more than 1,500 miles, was mislabeled as landlocked, too.

Those were just two examples on a map that incorrectly identified every country of the six the department intended to highlight as “funding opportunities” for its health grants.

Photographs and screenshots of the map quickly spread on social media.

“The U.S. government’s failure to catch this error before displaying the slide at the top international AIDS conference in the world, in a session that featured the director general of Nigeria as an invited guest, is not only disrespectful to African collaborators, it’s also a significant tell,” said Emily Bass, an AIDS expert, who reported the error wrote in a Substack post. Reuters and the Guardian also reported on it.

A State Department spokesperson described the episode as a mistake by a member of its team who had changed the slide deck right before the event in Rio de Janeiro. The department added that it took full responsibility for the misrepresentation.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has yet to visit Africa since taking office, aside from a brief trip to Egypt with President Donald Trump for the Gaza peace summit last fall. The Trump administration slashed aid to African nations when it shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Africans have long complained that their countries were a low priority for the U.S. Former President Joe Biden sought to deepen the U.S. commitment and counter growing Chinese and Russian influence on the continent.

Biden held an African Leaders Summit in Washington in 2022 and visited Angola shortly before leaving office.

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With assistance from Eric Martin.

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