Trump administration mislabels African countries in slideshow at AIDS conference

A Trump administration slideshow at a conference in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS), has caused outrage for displaying a map of Africa with countries incorrectly labelled.

Jeff Graham, the US envoy for the president's emergency plan for AIDS relief, a George W Bush-era programme, was leading the presentation.

A video of the event, which took place last week, was viewed by the Reuters news agency, which reported on Thursday that the map was found to have watermarks signalling it was made with OpenAI tools.

OpenAI is the San Francisco-based artificial intelligence innovator behind programmes like ChatGPT. The map was intended to show where the US has struck health agreements across Africa.

It showed a landlocked Nigeria, which actually faces the Atlantic Ocean.

The Ivory Coast was not only shown on the wrong side of the continent, but not along the coast at all.

Mozambique was shown as landlocked in the Horn of Africa when it is much further south, across from Madagascar.

The State Department told Reuters it "takes full responsibility" for the error, and that a staffer had hastily arranged the map. It did not apologise to its African partners at the conference.

It added that the US remains committed to achieving "real results" in the fight against AIDS on the African continent.

The incident comes as the Trump administration has not only shut down its leading aid provider, the US Agency for International Development, but has also slashed at least a third of the foreign service, in a bid to streamline government operations and roll back the budget.

What began as a 90-day freeze on foreign assistance in early 2025 turned into an almost complete dismantling of American humanitarian efforts.

The potentially deadly consequences for the most vulnerable, often children, were raised.

“No children are dying on my watch,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio insisted several months into the cost-saving programme.

But Atul Gawande, who served in the Biden administration as assistant administrator for global health in USAID, warned that with such large-scale cuts, “you’re talking hundreds of thousands [of deaths] in year one at a minimum. Just on the reduction in immunisations, you’re talking about more than a million”.

The Center for Global Development found that US cuts to the world’s largest funder of humanitarian aid could contribute to as many as 700,000 deaths per year.