Trump officials mislabel all African countries on map at global AIDS conference as U.S. cuts HIV aid

The Trump administration came to the world’s largest AIDS conference to explain its approach to global health. Its presentation showed that the U.S. government could not locate the countries whose health systems it was proposing to reshape.

During a State Department event Sunday ahead of AIDS 2026, officials displayed a map of Africa that mislabeled every country it identified. Nigeria was made landlocked. Mozambique was placed north of Uganda. Côte d’Ivoire was shifted toward southern Africa. Uganda and Malawi appeared in the right regions but with incorrect borders. Cameroon was named but not connected to any country.

Related: Donald Trump’s assault on foreign aid shuttered 1,700 HIV care sites worldwide

The State Department apologized, saying a staff member had hurriedly changed the presentation. The map carried a watermark indicating it had been created using OpenAI technology, according to Reuters.

Emily Bass, an HIV policy expert who attended the session and published images of the slide, said the mistake reflected something more consequential. Bass wrote on Substack that the presentation minimized the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s work while presenting established programs as Trump administration innovations.

“The U.S. Department of State Bureau of Global Health Security and Diplomacy is redrawing the map and rewriting history,” she wrote. Bass said officials highlighted Malawi’s public health emergency operations center without acknowledging the CDC’s role in supporting it.

Related: Trump's foreign aid freeze will stop AIDS funding under PEPFAR — a program that's saved millions

The episode landed amid a crisis the administration helped create. An amfAR study released for the conference found that delayed or canceled PEPFAR funding forced 1,700 HIV care sites to close and cost 16,000 health workers their jobs. About three-quarters of organizations serving sex workers, men who have sex with men, transgender people and people who inject drugs stopped services to comply with administration policies.

Bass also challenged claims that the new agreements represented a step toward country-led, multiyear planning. African officials were leading PEPFAR planning sessions in 2024, she noted, and the program had moved to a two-year cycle.

The episode comes as global HIV programs face funding cuts and disruptions tied to the Trump administration’s foreign aid freeze. Bass warned that a global health strategy cannot be built on careless geography or selective memory.

“A map has to be properly labeled for anyone to get where they’re going,” she wrote.