The U.S. State Department got every one of the countries on an Africa map wrong that it was highlighting for funding.
According to The New Republic, the State Department flub unfolded in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, this week during the annual International AIDS Conference. The U.S. unveiled a map of Africa that showed six countries and the U.S. investment for current Advancing Global Health Annual Program Statement (APS) funding.
"Nigeria drifted into the Sahara Desert, landlocked and lost; Mozambique was relocated to the eastern Horn of Africa; and the Ivory Coast, somehow, found itself nowhere near a coast. The map also included a country with no name," said the report.
The map, posted on X by Ana Lucia Araujo, PhD shows lines from the labels on the right to the "corresponding" countries, with the exception of Cameroon, which was abandoned altogether.
It was about halfway through the U.S.'s presentation when the map came out as State Department employees were talking about the new health agreements. Former Donald Trump strategist Elon Musk has been attacked for the past decisions to slash funding for HIV/AIDS prevention in Africa through the dismantling of USAID last year.
Those in the audience, which included high-level officials from several of the mislabeled countries, took photos of the map and shared it on social media.
Reuters did an analysis of the map and believes it had a watermark showing it was made by OpenAI.
That report said that one photo shared by journalist and AIDS expert Emily Bass on LinkedIn earned about 40,000 views.
They confirmed it was legitimately shown by reviewing a video of the presentation.
In a statement about the huge mistake, the State Department called it "confusion" and said it took “full responsibility.” Audience members said that the map was produced by someone else on the team who changed the slide deck before the presentation began.
“Whoever created and approved this slide did not know where countries in Africa are and did not care to check their work,” said The Atlantic Council's Matt Petit, who focuses on AI and geopolitics.
The speaker at the time was Jeff Graham, who serves as Trump's top U.S. health envoy. He oversees the full initiative for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR.
The conference itself was interrupted by protesters angry over Trump's huge cuts to the HIV/AIDS initiatives around the world established by former President George W. Bush in 2003.