RIO DE JANEIRO – The United States’ rapid dismantling of its HIV funding since January 2025 has caused the worst financial crisis for the sector in decades – but the US government’s willingness to host an information session on its new America First Global Health Strategy on the eve of the International AIDS Conference earned it some goodwill from delegates.

However, that goodwill rapidly evaporated when the US government displayed a wildly inaccurate map of Africa during a briefing by Jeff Graham, the acting US global AIDS co-ordinator. 

The US map locates Mozambique in the Horn of Africa, almost diametrically opposite to its actual position on the west coast of southern Africa. Nigeria appears in Niger, while West Africa’s Côte d’Ivoire was located in East Africa.

However, Graham did not notice the mistakes when he displayed the map during a session attended by Health Policy Watch.

The International AIDS Society (IAS) president-elect, Professor Kenneth Ngure of Jomo Kenyatta University in Kenya, responded, saying: “It is disheartening that a map mislabelling African countries was displayed. African countries must be taken seriously. The African continent continues to bear the greatest burden of the HIV pandemic, and our focus must now return to advancing the HIV response.”

Earlier, the US State Department told Reuters that it takes “full responsibility for ​the confusion and misrepresentation it ​caused for attendees, including ⁠our African partners”, claiming that a staff member had made last-minute changes to the presentation.

However, it did not offer any apology for not being able to locate the African countries with which it has signed Memorandums of Understanding (MOU), which outline the transition from US-supported to domestically financed HIV programmes.