U.S. govt apologises for mislabelling Nigeria, others on Africa map

The U.S. State Department blamed the error on a team member who arranged the slides in haste.

ADEFEMOLA AKINTADE • July 31, 2026

African map

The U.S. State Department has apologised for erroneously representing Nigeria, Uganda, and four other African nations on the map of Africa at the AIDS 2026 conference in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil.

The State Department apologised on Thursday.

The error occurred during a presentation at the conference displaying a map that pinpointed wrong locations for other nations like Mozambique, Côte d’Ivoire, Malawi, and Cameroon.

AIDS expert Emily Bass shared a photo of the wrong map on Substack, allowing newsrooms like Reuters to access and analyse it.

The masthead determined the map was AI-generated, noting it had “an artificial intelligence watermark that ⁠signals it was made with OpenAI tools”

A spokesperson for the U.S. State Department blamed the error on a team member who arranged the slides in haste.

“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,” the State Department’s spokesperson was cited as saying by CNN.

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

We have recently deactivated our website's comment provider in favour of other channels of distribution and commentary. We encourage you to join the conversation on our stories via our Facebook, Twitter and other social media pages.