Trump admin apologises for mislabelled map of Africa at AIDS conference
Donald Trump (Getty Images)
The Trump administration has apologised and is facing intense criticism after officials displayed a map of Africa that mislabelled every highlighted country during a presentation at AIDS 2026, while simultaneously defending sweeping changes to US-funded global HIV programmes.
During a US State Department event on Sunday (26 July) ahead of the Rio de Janeiro conference, officials presented a map that incorrectly labelled every African country it identified. Nigeria was shown as a landlocked nation, Mozambique appeared north of Uganda, Côte d’Ivoire was relocated to southern Africa, and several other countries were either misplaced or had incorrect borders. Cameroon was labelled without corresponding to any country on the map.
Following widespread criticism, the State Department apologised in a statement on Thursday (30 July) through a spokesperson, saying a staff member had made last-minute edits to the presentation, calling the incident “an unfortunate error”. According to Reuters analysis, the slide also contained a watermark indicating it had been created using OpenAI technology.
Emily Bass, an HIV policy expert who attended the event and first published the image of the presentation to her Substack on 26 July, said the errors went beyond simple geography.
Bass argued the presentation downplayed decades of work carried out by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) while presenting existing HIV infrastructure as though it were a new Trump administration initiative. She pointed to Malawi’s public health emergency operations centre as one example, saying officials highlighted it without acknowledging the CDC’s longstanding role in helping support it.
The controversy comes as global HIV organisations continue to warn about the impact of cuts to US foreign aid. A new amfAR report released during the conference found that delays and cancellations to funding through the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) have already forced around 1,700 HIV care sites to close and resulted in approximately 16,000 healthcare workers losing their jobs.
The report also found that roughly three-quarters of organisations serving populations at highest risk of HIV, including sex workers, transgender people, men who have sex with men and people who inject drugs, have suspended services to comply with new US funding policies.
Bass also challenged administration claims that its new funding agreements represent a shift toward locally led planning, noting that African governments were already leading PEPFAR planning processes in 2024 before the current administration took office.
Reflecting on the presentation, Bass wrote that effective global health policy requires both historical accuracy and basic geographical knowledge, concluding: “A map has to be properly labelled for anyone to get where they’re going.”
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