The US government admitted to making an “unfortunate error” after mislabeling every country on a map of Africa during a State Department presentation at a ⁠global conference in Brazil.

The map was part of a presentation about the State Department’s new health agreements given at the AIDS 2026 conference in ⁠Rio de Janeiro this week.

The map reportedly highlighted Nigeria, Mozambique, Uganda, Cote d’Ivoire, Malawi, and Cameroon. None were labeled correctly. It showed coastal Nigeria as landlocked in the Sahara Desert. Mozambique, which is in south-eastern Africa, was shown in the Horn of Africa while Cote d’Ivoire in west Africa was shown on the other side of the continent, according to CNN.

A Reuters analysis found the image of the map included ⁠in the presentation contained an artificial intelligence watermark that signals it was made with OpenAI tools.

The State Department said it took “full responsibility” ‌for the map, which had been produced by a team member who hastily changed ‌the slide deck before the event.

“This was an unfortunate error caused by a team member who hastily altered the slide deck immediately before the presentation at the AIDS 2026 Conference,” a State Department spokesperson said.

Critics blame the error on the Trump administration firing career officials at the State Department.

This is “a reflection of what happens when you fire ⅓ of the State Department, eliminate multiple layers of bureaucracy and have too junior staff performing work under-supervised,” Cameron Hudson, a former State Department and NSC official on Africa, said.

“There isn’t just a cost savings when eviscerating staff and expertise. There’s a real cost in reputation and effectiveness,” he posted on Twitter. “I suspect many people don’t actually care because they say it’s Africa, but the same thing is happening with teams trying to negotiate nuclear deals with Iran. That should concern everyone.”

Despite the error, the ​State Department said the discussions at the conference were “substantive and constructive” ​and that it remained ‌committed to fighting AIDS ​with real results.

However, a new report says the Trump administration’s cuts to USAID and the President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (PEPFAR), which has been credited with saving over 26 million lives since 2003, revealed that more than 1,700 treatment sites have closed.