US admits 'unfortunate error' after mislabelling countries on map of Africa

Nigerians might be surprised to learn they live in a landlocked country and people in Ivory Coast shocked that they are East African not West African - but that is what a map used by a US official at a recent conference showed.

Not only that, the cartographic malfunction included completely unrecognisable shapes of the six misidentified countries.

The erroneous map appeared during a State Department slide presentation about Washington's funding for programmes tackling HIV at an Aids conference in Brazil on Sunday.

The State Department has described it as "an unfortunate error" caused when a team member "hurriedly altered" the slide deck before the event.

In a statement quoted by news agencies, a spokesperson added that it took "full responsibility for the confusion and misrepresentation it caused for attendees, including our African partners".

The mistake came to light after HIV/Aids expert Emily Bass shared a photograph of the slide on her Substack newsletter, prompting widespread criticism online.

The image contained an artificial intelligence watermark indicating it had been created using AI tools, an analysis by the Reuters news agency found.

Three of the six African countries highlighted - Nigeria, Mozambique and Ivory Coast - are all incorrectly positioned. Malawi and Uganda are roughly in the right place but are misshapen and Cameroon is mentioned but the name is not linked to a country on the map.

OpenAI said it was investigating the report, Reuters said.

The presentation was delivered by a senior US official overseeing the President's Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (Pepfar), Washington's flagship global HIV programme.

"What an embarrassment. This is what happens when [the State Department] fires career experts and tries to have AI conduct diplomacy," Democrat and ranking member of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee Senator Jeanne Shaheen wrote on X.

Cameron Hudson, a former State Department official, termed the mistake "stupid and embarrassing", saying it was the result of having "too junior staff performing work under-supervised".

The 26th International Aids Conference opened on Sunday in Rio de Janeiro against the backdrop of deep US cuts to foreign aid introduced after President Donald Trump's return to the White House last year.

Despite the controversy, the State Department said discussions at the conference had been "substantive and constructive" and reaffirmed its commitment to combating HIV/Aids in Africa and elsewhere.

The incident comes as the Trump administration reshapes US global health assistance after sharply reducing foreign aid last year.

While Pepfar's core life-saving HIV treatment programmes have largely resumed, Washington is scaling back spending in other areas, including prevention and disease surveillance, and also plans to phase out the programme in South Africa.