The minSdk version should not be declared in the android manifest file

Inside your manifest there must be inside which minsdkversion might have been written. Just remove <uses-sdk>....</uses-sdk>

I had an issue when trying to use androidx.security on minimum SDK version 19. The lint command threw an exception on the <uses-sdk> tag. I found my answer here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/27175950/1651697 It turns out I didn't need to define the android:minSdkVersion, just override the <uses-sdk> tag.