US government map of Africa at global conference mislabels every country

A US government map of Africa mislabeled every country during a State Department presentation at a global conference in Brazil this week, causing a stir among attendees who took screenshots and posted them online.

Footage shows the errant map displayed during a presentation about the State Department’s new health agreements.

A Reuters analysis finds the image of the map included in the presentation contained an artificial intelligence watermark that signals it was made with OpenAI tools. The company did not respond to a request for comment.

The State Department says it takes “full responsibility” for the confusion caused and that the map had been produced by a team member who hastily changed the slide deck before the event.

"A senior US State Department official displayed a map of Africa that was completely wrong before high-level officials from African nations, including some whose countries had been mislabeled,' in a dispiriting discussion of new US AIDS response MoUs with multiple African… pic.twitter.com/rcOIBlfJZr

— Sam Zarifi (@SZarifi) July 29, 2026

The map showed Nigeria, where the US currently has several hundred troops deployed, as landlocked in the Sahara Desert. Mozambique, which is in southeastern Africa, was relocated to the Horn of Africa, while Ivory Coast in West Africa was placed on the other side of the continent.

Screenshots of the map first appeared in a Substack post by AIDS expert Emily Bass and are widely shared on LinkedIn, with one post garnering some 40,000 views.

“Whoever created and approved this slide did not know where countries in Africa are and did not care to check their work,” writes Matt Petit, who focuses on AI and geopolitics at the Atlantic Council, in the post.