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At the just concluded Google for Nigeria event, Google announced that it
has launched Street View on Google Maps in Nigeria, with Lagos being
the pioneer state.
Google said that thousands of new addresses and streets, outlines of
more than a million buildings in commercial and residential areas, and
more than 100,000 additional Nigerian small businesses have been added
on Google Maps.
Lagos has been launched on Street View with 10,000 kilometers of imagery, including the most important historic roads in the city.
With this development, you can virtually drive along the Carter
Bridge to the National Stadium or across the Eko Bridge, down to the
Marina – all on your smartphone.
At the event which was attended by Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai, the
company announced how it is planning to make the internet work for
everyone in Africa.
Google also announced that several updates have been made on Search to bring more useful, relevant answers and information to people in Nigeria. According to the tech giant, the updates include:
- Knowledge Panels: We’re connecting people with easy
access to the answers to things they care about, displaying knowledge
cards for everything from local football teams to Nigerian musicians and
actors. - Health Cards: Later this year we’ll launch more
than 800 knowledge cards detailing common symptoms and treatments for
the most prevalent health conditions in Nigeria. We’ve partnered with
the University of Ibadan to ensure that answers have been reviewed by
Nigerian doctors for local relevance and accuracy. Nigeria is one of the
first countries where we’re providing locally tailored health answers
on Search. - Posts on Google: Posts makes it possible for
musicians, entertainers and other public figures to share updates,
images and videos directly on Google, for people to see while they
explore on the web. Nigeria is the third country where we’ve made this
feature available and some of the country’s popular musicians are
already using it.
Google’s other development programmes for Africa include:
Digital Skills for Africa
Last year we set out to help bridge the digital skills gap in Africa
when we pledged to train one million young people in the region—and
we’ve exceeded this target. Through either in-person or online
trainings, we help people learn to build a web presence, use Search to
find jobs, get tips to enhance their CV, use social media, and so on.
Now we’re expanding this program, and committing to prepare
another 10 million people for jobs of the future in the next five years.
We’ll also be providing mobile developer training to 100,000 Africans
to develop world-class apps, with an initial focus on Nigeria, Kenya and
South Africa.
Google.org grants
Our charitable arm, Google.org, is committing $20 million over the next
five years to nonprofits that are working to improve lives across
Africa. We’re giving $2.5 million in initial grants to the nonprofit
arms of African startups Gidi Mobile and Siyavula to
provide free access to learning for 400,000 low-income students in
South Africa and Nigeria. The grantees will also develop new digital
learning materials that will be free for anyone to use.
We also want to invite nonprofits from across the continent to share
their ideas for how they could impact their community and beyond. So
we’re launching a Google.org Impact Challenge in Africa in 2018 to award
$5 million in grants. Any eligible nonprofit in Africa can apply, and
anyone will be able to help select the best ideas by voting online.
Launchpad Accelerator Africa
We want to do more to support African entrepreneurs in building
successful technology companies and products. Based on our global
Launchpad Accelerator program, this initiative will provide more than $3
million in equity-free funding, mentorship, working space and access to
expert advisers to more than 60 African startups over three years.
Intensive three-month programs, held twice per year,
will run out of a new Google Launchpad Space in Lagos—the program’s first location outside of the United States
YouTube Go
Designed from the ground up, YouTube Go lets you discover, save and
share videos you love in a way that’s transparent about the size of
downloads. Designed to be “offline” first, the app improves the
experience of watching videos on a slower network and gives control over
the amount of data used streaming or saving videos. It’s a full YouTube
experience, with fresh and relevant video recommendations tailored to
your preferences and the ability to share videos quickly and easily with
friends nearby. In June, Nigeria became the second country where we
started actively testing YouTube Go. Later this year, we’ll be expanding
this to a beta launch of the app, available to all Nigerian users.
Faster web results
When you’re on a 2G-like connection or using a low storage device, pages
can take a long time to load. We previously launched a feature that
streamlines search results so they load with less data and at high
speed. Today we’re extending that feature to streamline websites you
reach from search results, so that they load with 90 percent less data
and five times faster, even on low storage devices.