We all make mistakes from time to time. Few mistakes, however, manage to place Nigeria in the Sahara Desert and to move Mozambique to the Horn of Africa, while relocating several other African countries in a single PowerPoint slide.

Yet this is precisely what happened when the US State Department displayed a map of Africa showing countries that are eligible for America’s global health funding at the twenty-sixth International Aids Conference, held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, at the end of last month.

The map did not remain confined in the conference room. Within hours, it had become an international object of ridicule, after New York-based HIV policy expert Emily Bass, who was attending the conference, published the embarrassing episode on her Substack newsletter, To End a Plague . . . Again, under the headline ‘The US State Department redraws the map of Africa at the AIDS2026 Conference’.

Nigeria and Mozambique were not the only countries sent wandering by the rogue PowerPoint slide, for which the US delegation apologised, putting it down to last-minute alterations that went awry. Côte d’Ivoire, Uganda, Malawi and Cameroon were also given unfamiliar neighbourhoods.

The jokes, as the saying goes, wrote themselves. Social media users needed little imagination to mock a map that appeared to give Africa a geographical makeover. One widely shared reaction summed up the absurdity in a single line: “The State Department is having some trouble identifying States.”

Others pointed out that Nigeria, a country with a long Atlantic coastline – about 850 km – had somehow become landlocked and “lost” in the Sahara, while Mozambique had been relocated thousands of kilometres north and Côte d’Ivoire found itself nowhere near the coast that gives it part of its name.

The slide was displayed during a session where deliberations focused on countries that have been central to the global health efforts of the US, particularly through programmes that have saved millions of lives across the African continent. The irony was therefore difficult to ignore: a presentation about partnership and support accompanied by an image that suggested unfamiliarity with some of the very countries at the centre of that partnership!

But beneath the amusement lies a more serious question about how some of the world’s most influential institutions perceive and engage with Africa. When a map is wrong – and especially spectacularly wrong, as was the case with the Rio de Janeiro PowerPoint slide – it inevitably raises questions about the level of attention paid to the continent.

While the incident should not be exaggerated into proof that the US State Department does not understand Africa, we should perhaps reflect on the lessons it offers. For decades, Africans have complained about a tendency to treat the continent as a single, vague entity rather than a collection of nations with distinct histories, languages, economies and political realities.

Too often, “Africa” is used as though it describes one country rather than 54 nations – or 55 if you include Western Sahara, whose contested status is a reminder that the question of who belongs on the political map of Africa is not as simple as outsiders often assume. Morocco controls most of the territory but the African Union recognises the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic as a member State. So, while a misplaced map might seem like a small matter, symbols do matter because, at least to some people, they reveal habits of thinking.

Moreover, the world has changed dramatically, with Africa now home to some of the fastest-growing economies and the youngest population of any continent, while its voice is becoming more influential in global affairs. Increasingly, African governments are no longer simply recipients of aid but partners whose cooperation is essential on issues as varied as health, security, climate change, trade and global governance.

That reality requires more than superficial engagement, and respect in this sense begins with getting the basics right, such as knowing where Nigeria, Mozambique, Côte d’Ivoire or Malawi are located, which demonstrates respect for the countries, people and institutions with which developed countries seek to build relations.

While the US State Department’s erroneous map of Africa will eventually disappear from public memory – just like scores of official blunders that embarrassed governments and institutions before it – it served as a reminder that informed engagement with Africa still cannot be taken for granted.