State Department Mislabels African Nations on Map at AIDS Summit

The US State Department presented a map of Africa that mislabeled every nation on the continent that it attempted to highlight at the International AIDS Conference in Brazil this week.

Trump administration mislabels African countries in slideshow at AIDS conference MEE staff on Thu, 07/30/2026 - 19:05 The State Department said a staffer hastily arranged the map but did not apologise to its African partners at the event A screen shows a US government map of Africa with mi

Nigeria was depicted as a landlocked nation in the Sahara Desert rather than in West Africa.

Nigeria, a coastal country in western Africa, was landlocked in the Sahara, among other errors. The department said it had been “hastily altered.”

Brigadier General Paul G. Filcek, Director of Logistics at US AFRICOM, disclosed this during a digital press conference with African journalists on the ongoing 2026 Africa Logistics and Communications Symposium, co-hosted with the Ethiopian Ministry of Defence.