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Cloud computing enabling entrepreneurship in Africa
December 20, 2012
In 2007, 33-year-old Vuyile moved to Cape Town from rural South Africa in search of work. Unable to complete high school, he worked as a night shift security guard earning $500/month to support his family. During the rush hour commute from his home in Khayelitsha, Vuyile realized that he could earn extra income by selling prepaid mobile airtime vouchers to other commuters on the train.
In rural areas, it’s common to use prepaid vouchers to pay for basic services such as electricity, insurance and airtime for mobile phones. But it’s often difficult to distribute physical vouchers because of the risk of theft and fraud.
Nomanini
, a startup based in South Africa, built a device that enables local entrepreneurs like Vuyile to sell prepaid mobile services in their communities. The Lula (which means “easy” in colloquial Zulu), is a portable voucher sales terminal that is used on-the-go by people ranging from taxi drivers to street vendors. It generates and prints codes which people purchase to add minutes to their mobile phones.
Today, Vuyile sells vouchers on the train for cash payment, and earns a commission weekly. Since he started using the Lula, he’s seen his monthly income increase by 20 percent.
Vuyile prints a voucher from his Lula
Nomanini founders Vahid and Ali Monadjem wanted to make mobile services widely available in areas where they had been inaccessible, or where—in a region where the average person makes less than $200/month—people simply couldn’t afford them. By creating a low-cost and easy-to-use product, Nomanini could enable entrepreneurs in Africa to go to deep rural areas and create businesses for themselves.
In order to build a scalable and reliable backend system to keep the Lula running, Nomanini chose to run on
Google App Engine
. Their development team doesn’t have to spend time setting up their own servers and can instead run on the same infrastructure that powers Google’s own applications. They can focus on building their backend systems and easily deploy code to Google’s data centers. When Vuyile makes a sale, he presses a few buttons, App Engine processes the request, and the voucher prints in seconds.
Last month, 40,000 people bought airtime through the Lula, and Nomanini hopes to grow this number to 1 million per month next year. While platforms like App Engine are typically used to build web or smartphone apps, entrepreneurs like Vahid and Ali are finding innovative ways to leverage this technology by building their own devices and connecting them to App Engine. Vahid tells us: “We’re a uniquely born and bred African solution, and we have great potential to take this to the rest of Africa and wider emerging markets. We could not easily scale this fast without running on Google App Engine.”
To learn more about the technical implementation used by Nomanini, read their guest post on the
Google App Engine blog
.
Posted by Zafir Khan, Google App Engine
Announcing the Africa News Innovation Challenge winners
November 30, 2012
Digital tools are an increasing impetus for innovation across African newsrooms. From crowdsourcing content to using infographics to tell stories, journalists are finding new ways to report the news. We're excited to be supporting these innovators through the $1 million Africa News Innovation Challenge,
announced in May this year
—the latest in a series of projects to spur innovation in African journalism.
Run by the the
African Media Initiative
, other partners include
Omidyar Network
, the
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
, the
John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
, the
U.S. State Department
, the
Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS)
and the
World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA)
. The response to the challenge was really enthusiastic, with more than 500 proposals submitted.
The 20 winners are all exciting digital journalism projects that will contribute to solving some of the biggest challenges facing the African media industry. They range from mobile apps to mobilise citizens against corruption and improved infographics to communicate complex issues, to developing new platforms for sharing content on buses and taxis. Key themes among the projects include a growing concern about manipulated online content, the security of communications with whistleblowers and sources, and the need to improve engagement with audiences.
The projects have the potential to be replicated by media elsewhere in Africa, or to be scaled up across the continent, to create wide and sustained impact. Some projects will also develop new tools to support newsrooms and boost media revenues to support sustainable journalism. Winners will receive cash grants ranging from $10,000 to $100,000; technology support from a team of four developers at AMI’s
jAccelerator lab
in Kenya, and business development support from top media strategists affiliated with the
World Association of Newspapers & News Publishers
. Ten of the winners will also be flown to the Knight Foundation’s annual M.I.T. Civic Media Conference in the U.S., while the rest will be showcased at other important industry events.
The ANIC winners are:
actNOW
(Ghana)
AdBooker
(South Africa)
Africa Check
(South Africa / Nigeria)
skyCAM
(Kenya / Nigeria)
Africa’s Wealth
(renamed
NewsStack
) (Nigeria / Namibia)
Citizen Desk
(Mozambique)
Code4Ghana
(Ghana)
ConvergeCMS
(Kenya / Tanzania / Uganda)
CorruptionNET
(South Africa)
DataWrapper
(Nigeria / Senegal / Tanzania)
End-to-End
(renamed
LastMile Crowdmapping
) (Liberia / Ghana / Kenya)
FlashCast
(Kenya)
Green Hornet
(South Africa)
ListeningPost
(South Africa)
MoJo: Keeping media honest by monitoring online journalism
(South Africa)
openAFRICA
(Kenya / Nigeria / Rwanda / South Africa)
ODADI
(renamed
Code4SouthAfrica
) (South Africa)
Oxpeckers
(South Africa)
Wikipedia Zero
(Cameroon / Ivory Coast / Tunisia / Uganda)
ZeroNews
(pan-African)
You can learn more about the winners’ projects on the
ANIC website
.
We can’t wait to see how these innovations unfold and we look forward to working with more African journalists to help them use technologies to tell important stories.
Posted by Julie Taylor, Communications Manager, Sub Saharan Africa
(Cross-posted from the
Africa Blog
)
Using the power of mapping to support South Sudan
May 5, 2011
Last Thursday, the
Google Map Maker
team, along with the
World Bank
and
UNITAR/UNOSAT
, held a
unique event
at the
World Bank
Headquarters in Washington, D.C., and a
satellite event
in Nairobi at the same time. More than 70 members of the Sudanese diaspora, along with regional experts from the World Bank,
Sudan Institute
,
Voices for Sudan
,
The Enough Project
and other organizations gathered together to map what is expected to become the world’s newest country later this year: the Republic of South Sudan. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has asked the international community “to assist all Sudanese towards greater stability and development” during and beyond this period of transition.
South Sudan is a large but under-mapped region, and there are very few high-quality maps that display essential features like roads, hospitals and schools. Up-to-date maps are particularly important to humanitarian aid groups, as they help responders target their efforts and mobilize their resources of equipment, personnel and supplies. More generally, maps are an important foundation for the development of the infrastructure and economy of the country and region.
The Map Maker community—a wide-ranging group of volunteers that help build more comprehensive maps of the world using our online mapping tool, Google Map Maker—has been contributing to the mapping effort for Sudan since the referendum on January 9. To aid their work, we’ve published
updated satellite imagery of the region
, covering 125,000 square kilometers and 40 percent of the U.N.’s priority areas, to Google Earth and Maps.
The goal of last week’s event was to engage and train members of the Sudanese diaspora in the United States, and others who have lived and worked in the region, to use Google Map Maker so they could contribute their local knowledge of the region to the ongoing mapping effort, particularly in the area of social infrastructure. Our hope is that this event and others like it will help build a self-sufficient mapping community that will contribute their local expertise and remain engaged in Sudan over time.
We were inspired by the group’s enthusiasm. One attendee told us: “I used to live in this small village that before today did not exist on any maps that I know of...a place unknown to the world. Now I can show to my kids, my friends, my community, where I used to live and better tell the story of my people.”
The group worked together to make several hundred edits to the map of Sudan in four hours. As those edits are approved, they’ll appear live in Google Maps, available for all the world to see. But this wasn’t just a one-day undertaking—attendees will now return to their home communities armed with new tools and ready to teach their friends and family how to join the effort. We look forward to seeing the Southern Sudanese mapping community grow and flourish.
Posted by France Lamy, Program Manager, Google.org
Two new Google domains: Iraq and Tunisia
March 31, 2011
We offer search on different regional domains, such as google.fr for France and google.dj for Djibouti, in order to provide the most locally-relevant results. We've steadily brought Google to many of the world's domains, and
today we announced
on our Google Arabia Blog that we're adding two more:
google.iq
for Iraq and
google.tn
for Tunisia. This brings the number of local Google search domains worldwide to 184, with 15 domains in Arab countries.
The new domains will help people in Iraq and Tunisia find locally relevant information, faster. For example, a search for [central bank] on the Iraq domain yields
results
relevant to someone in Iraq, such as the Central Bank of Iraq. On the other hand, the same search on the Tunisia domain returns
slightly different results
.
The new domains also make it easier for people in Iraq and Tunisia to access search in their preferred languages. In Iraq, people can now easily access Google search in local languages like Arabic and Kurdish; while in Tunisia, people can find the Google interface in Arabic and French. In the past, people in these regions would need to visit the domain for another country to use Google in an interface they were comfortable with. And when they did, the results would be relevant to a different region.
Local domains are a first step towards making the web more accessible and relevant for people around the world. They’re also an integral part of
our vision
to make all of our products available in the world's top 40 most spoken languages covering 99 percent of Internet users worldwide. We plan to add more domains in the coming months, so stay tuned!
Posted by AbdelKarim Mardini, Product Manager, Middle East & North Africa
YouTube Highlights 2/17/2011
February 17, 2011
This is the latest in our series of YouTube highlights. Every couple of weeks, we bring you regular updates on new product features, interesting programs to watch and tips you can use to grow your audience on YouTube. Just look for the label “
YouTube Highlights
” and subscribe to the series. – Ed.
A lot has happened since our last update, including protests in Egypt, a major U.S. sporting event, the launch of the Google Art project and the Grammy Music Awards—all portrayed in different ways by YouTube and our global community.
Footage of protests in the Middle East on YouTube
Thousands of videos
of the protests in Egypt earlier this month were uploaded to YouTube, giving people access to raw footage shot by Egyptians on the ground. People around the world could access these videos by visiting
CitizenTube
, YouTube’s news and politics channel, or watching live coverage on Al Jazeera’s
Arabic
and
English
YouTube channels, as well as
Fox News'
and Arabic broadcaster
Al-Arabiya
’s YouTube channels. We’ve also been working with news curation group
Storyful
to curate videos from the protest movements in Bahrain, Iran, Yemen, Algeria and Libya—you can check out highlights on
CitizenTube
.
This week’s trends on YouTube
Each weekday,
YouTube Trends
takes a look at the most interesting videos and cultural phenomena on YouTube.
Here’s
a sampling from the past two weeks:
The
most popular videos in Wisconsin
the day after Green Bay won its
trophy
Gospel music: it’s popular in
both expected and unexpected
places
Powerful footage
from the protests in Egypt
University of Connecticut quarterback
Johnny McEntee's football skills
2011 Nonprofit Video Awards
For the second year in a row, we’re working to help nonprofits succeed through the
DoGooder Nonprofit Video Awards
, a
celebration of the best nonprofit video
on the site. Submit your nonprofit’s video at
www.youtube.com/nonprofitvideoawards
. Prizes include $2,500 grants from the Case Foundation, Flip cams, free admission to the Nonprofit Technology Conference and a spotlight on the YouTube homepage.
Showtime’s “SHORT stories” recruits short filmmakers
Showtime
wants to feature cutting-edge web filmmakers through its “
SHORT stories
” series. If you’re a filmmaker interested in the project,
find out more from Showtime's Trevor Noren
.
The big game: find out which ads garnered the most views
The halftime ads during the U.S.’s biggest sporting event, the Super Bowl, are notoriously popular—and this past game was no exception. YouTube Trends analyzed which ads were the
most-searched commercials
in the hours following the big game and compiled
the top 10 most-viewed ads
the day after. We also discovered some
fun facts
about the big game: Did you know that an
estimated 69.6 million pounds of avocados
were consumed on that Sunday? Or that this time was the first Super Bowl with
no cheerleaders
? Check out
YouTube AdBlitz
to watch any ads you may have missed.
Events worth watching
In case you missed them live, you can still catch up on some of the big happenings of the past few weeks on YouTube:
The Grammys: Catch
behind-the-scenes footage from the Sunday, February 13 awards ceremony
on YouTube or visit
youtube.com/thegrammys
Fashion Week: During
Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week
(February 10-17),
we've been bringing viewers
the hottest designers’ shows, from
Carolina Herrera
to
Herve Leger
to
Alice & Olivia
; visit
www.youtube.com/liverunway
for more
Birthday tribute for the “
The Great Communicator
”: Sunday, February 6 would have been the 100th birthday of Ronald Reagan, the 40th President of the United States. Find many of his
iconic speeches
, such as this
message to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev
, as well as
tributes
and historical videos on YouTube
We’ll update you again in a few weeks. In the meantime, visit the
YouTube Blog
for more on ongoing programs such as
On the Rise
and
YouTube Trends
.
Posted by Serena Satyasai, Marketing Manager, The YouTube Team
Some weekend work that will (hopefully) enable more Egyptians to be heard
January 31, 2011
Like many people we’ve been glued to the news unfolding in Egypt and thinking of what we could do to help people on the ground. Over the weekend we came up with the idea of a speak-to-tweet service—the ability for anyone to tweet using just a voice connection.
We worked with a small team of engineers from Twitter, Google and SayNow, a company we
acquired
last week, to make this idea a reality. It’s already live and anyone can tweet by simply leaving a voicemail on one of these international phone numbers (+16504194196 or +390662207294 or +97316199855) and the service will instantly tweet the message using the hashtag #egypt. No Internet connection is required. People can listen to the messages by dialing the same phone numbers or going to
twitter.com/speak2tweet
.
We hope that this will go some way to helping people in Egypt stay connected at this very difficult time. Our thoughts are with everyone there.
Update
Feb 1, 12:47 PM
: When possible, we're now detecting the approximate (country-level) geographic origin of each call dialing one of our speak2tweet numbers and attaching a hashtag for that country to each tweet. For example, if a call comes from Switzerland, you'll see #switzerland in the tweet, and if one comes from Egypt you'll see #egypt. For calls when we can't detect the location, we default to an #egypt hashtag.
Posted by Ujjwal Singh, CoFounder of SayNow and AbdelKarim Mardini, Product Manager, Middle East & North Africa
Voice Search in underrepresented languages
November 9, 2010
(Cross-posted from the
Google Research Blog
)
Welkom*!
Today we’re introducing Voice Search support for Zulu and Afrikaans, as well as South African-accented English. The addition of Zulu in particular represents our first effort in building Voice Search for
underrepresented languages
.
We define underrepresented languages as those which, while spoken by millions, have little presence in electronic and physical media, e.g., webpages, newspapers and magazines. Underrepresented languages have also often received little attention from the speech research community. Their phonetics, grammar, acoustics, etc., haven’t been extensively studied, making the development of ASR (automatic speech recognition) voice search systems challenging.
We believe that the speech research community needs to start working on many of these underrepresented languages to advance progress and build speech recognition, translation and other Natural Language Processing (NLP) technologies. The development of NLP technologies in these languages is critical for enabling
information access for everybody
. Indeed, these technologies have the potential to break language barriers.
We also think it’s important that researchers in these countries take a leading role in advancing the state of the art in their own languages. To this end, we’ve collaborated with the Multilingual Speech Technology group at
South Africa’s North-West University
led by Prof. Ettiene Barnard (also of the
Meraka Research Institute
), an authority in speech technology for South African languages. Our development effort was spearheaded by Charl van Heerden, a South African intern and a student of Prof. Barnard. With the help of Prof. Barnard’s team, we collected acoustic data in the three languages, developed lexicons and grammars, and Charl and others used those to develop the three Voice Search systems. A team of language specialists traveled to several cities collecting audio samples from hundreds of speakers in multiple acoustic conditions such as street noise, background speech, etc. Speakers were asked to read typical search queries into an
Android app
specifically designed for audio data collection.
For Zulu, we faced the additional challenge of few text sources on the web. We often analyze the search queries from local versions of Google to build our lexicons and language models. However, for Zulu there weren’t enough queries to build a useful language model. Furthermore, since it has few online data sources, native speakers have learned to use a mix of Zulu and English when searching for information on the web. So for our Zulu Voice Search product, we had to build a truly hybrid recognizer, allowing free mixture of both languages. Our phonetic inventory covers both English and Zulu and our grammars allow natural switching from Zulu to English, emulating speaker behavior.
This is our first release of Voice Search in a native African language, and we hope that it won’t be the last. We’ll continue to work on technology for languages that have until now received little attention from the speech recognition community.
Salani kahle!**
* “Welcome” in Afrikaans
** “Stay well” in Zulu
Posted by Pedro J. Moreno, Staff Research Scientist and Johan Schalkwyk, Senior Staff Engineer
FIFA.com and Google team up to help fans celebrate the 2010 FIFA World Cup™
June 11, 2010
The 2010 FIFA World Cup has kicked off in South Africa. During the month-long tournament, millions of fans around the world will follow the games.
To mark the event,
FIFA.com
, the world’s official football website, and Google have collaborated on a range of online features to help supporters keep track of how each team is doing throughout the tournament. Whether you’re searching for FIFA World Cup news or want to voice your opinion on a player’s performance, we have a number of ways for fans to stay on top of the action:
Follow your team while browsing the Internet
: stay up-to-date when you’re online with the
FIFA.com Chrome extension
. Get a live feed of FIFA World Cup results, news and match statistics and if you’re supporting a particular team, personalise the gadget for alerts of goals scored by your team as they happen.
See the latest scores and schedules in search results
: search for [
world cup
], [
world cup spain
], [
world cup group g
] and more, and you’ll see live scores, latest results and match schedules at the top of your search results. You’ll find quick links to game recaps, live updates, standings and team profiles on FIFA.com.
Follow the tournament on your personalised home page
: get all the latest information on FIFA World Cup teams, players and matches streamed to your very own home page with the
iGoogle Gadget
. If you want to know more about where all the action is happening, click on the ‘venues’ tab to take a closer look at the stadiums.
Get a feel for what it’s like to be there
: FIFA.com and
South African Tourism
have used Google Maps to add information about the host cities, stadiums and attractions, giving people easy access to these sights with Street View and 3D views:
maps.google.com/exploresouthafrica
You can get access to all of these features from FIFA.com and Google by visiting
google.com/worldcup
Good luck to all, and may the best team win!
Posted by Obi Felten, Director of Consumer Marketing-EMEA, & Yonca Brunini, Marketing Director, Southern & Eastern Europe, Middle East & Africa
Follow your football team in South Africa, wherever you are
June 8, 2010
Whether you’ll be in South Africa in person this month, or simply cheering your team on from back home, our new tools for football fans can help you soak up the atmosphere and follow your team wherever you are in the world.
You can check out the brand new Street View imagery for South Africa which includes amazing pictures from seven of South Africa’s new football stadiums, including
Soccer City in Johannesburg
,
Peter Mokaba Stadium
in Polokwane and
Moses Mabhida Stadium
in Durban. Each one can be explored from pitch-level in 360 degrees, both inside and out—see a preview on the
Lat Long blog
. These detailed images were collected over the last few months, using the Street View Trike and some serious pedal power!
You can also
zoom around
the host cities and stadiums in 3D. Simply turn on the 3D buildings layer in Google Earth or switch to Earth View in Google Maps, and zoom in to the chosen destination. All 10 of the football stadiums have been modelled in amazing 3D detail, as well as the South African cities of Rustenburg, Nelspruit, Polokwane, Cape Town, Durban, Pretoria, Port Elizabeth, Bloemfontein and Johannesburg.
To make it easier for people to find all these great places,
South African Tourism
have provided information on the most important sights. Visit
maps.google.com/exploresouthafrica
to start virtually exploring South Africa.
If you’re staying back home but want to find a great place to watch the match with your friends, take a look on Google Maps and look for the special football icon—that tells you that the location is one of tens of thousands of businesses who have added themselves to Google Places as a
football viewing location
.
Our first global
Doodle 4 Google
competition is well underway, with tens of thousands of children in 17 countries around the world sending us their amazing designs for a doodle around the theme of “I Love Football.” The winning doodle will be displayed internationally on the Google homepage for a day on July 11, 2010.
To make it easy for you to customize your photos to show the world which team you’re cheering for, we’ve launched a set of
football-themed photo effects
in Picnik. With just a few clicks, you can add digital face paint, soccer-themed stickers and team flag overlays, customized for each of the 32 qualifying teams.
Finally, it’s not just the professional players who’ve been put through their paces ahead of kick-off. In the run-up to the games, fans from around the the world have joined the legendary Dutch midfielder
Edgar Davids
on his
Street Soccer Tour
for Charity from Amsterdam, London and Paris and to eight cities in Senegal, Ghana, Kenya and South Africa. Edgar and his team of Street Soccer Legends have been competing against local players as they make their journey to South Africa and you can watch them on
YouTube
.
May the best team win!
Update
12:09PM: Updated link to Picnik photo effects.
Posted by Yonca Brunini, Marketing Director, Southern and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa (SEEMEA)
Google Earth helps discover rare hominid ancestor in South Africa
April 8, 2010
Today, scientists announced a new hominid fossil discovery in the
Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site in South Africa
. The discovery is one of the most significant palaeoanthropological discoveries in recent times, revealing at least two partial hominid skeletons in remarkable condition, dating to between 1.78 and 1.95 million years. We are especially excited because
Google Earth
played a role in its discovery.
So how did this come about? Back in March 2008, Professor Lee Berger from
Witswatersrand University
in Johannesburg started to use Google Earth to map various known caves and fossil deposits identified by him and his colleagues over the past several decades, as it seemed the ideal platform by which to share information with other scientists. In addition, he also used Google Earth to locate new fossil deposits by learning to identify what cave sites looked like in satellite images.
At the beginning of this project, there were approximately 130 known cave sites in the region and around 20 fossil deposits. With the help of the navigation facility and high-resolution satellite imagery in Google Earth, Professor Berger went on to find almost 500 previously unidentified caves and fossil sites, even though the area is one of the most explored in Africa. One of these fossil sites yielded the remarkable discovery of a new species,
Australopithecus sediba
. This species was an upright walker that shared many physical traits with the earliest known species of the genus
homo
— and its introduction into the fossil record might answer some key questions about our earliest ancestry in Africa.
We’re absolutely thrilled about this announcement, and delighted that our free mapping tools such as Google Earth and
Google Maps
continue to enable both individuals and distinguished scientists to explore and learn about their world. With these tools, places both foreign and familiar can be explored with the click of a mouse, allowing for new understandings of geography, topology, urbanism, development, architecture and the environment. Our efforts to organize the world’s geographic information are ongoing — but at the end of the day, seeing the way these tools are put to use is what most inspires us.
Posted by Michael Jones, Chief Technology Advocate
Designing useful mobile services for Africa
July 8, 2009
Last week, we announced a suite of
SMS services in Uganda
, a country where someone's first experience of the Internet is far more likely to be on a mobile device rather than a PC. We are really excited about this project in part because it is the result of more than a year of true user-centered research and design. We knew we wanted to build useful mobile services tailored to the needs of people in sub-Saharan Africa, but how could we find out what people want from the Internet when they don't have access to it already? What would people who had never used search before want to search for if we gave them a mobile phone and said "Ask any question you like"?
In early 2008 we set out with colleagues from
Google.org
,
Grameen Applab
and
MTN
(a network carrier in Uganda) with this challenge in mind. Our research needed to be able to assess the feasibility of delivering information via mobile in Uganda as well as evaluate the content "appetites" of local people. Since no search engine existed for testing, we did the next best thing: We decided to mimic the experience of using a search engine using human experts.
First, we trained a multilingual team to act as user researchers in 17 carefully selected locations across the country. In each place, they introduced themselves to a cross section of people they met and invited them to participate in a free study that would help create useful services for Ugandans. If the person agreed, the researcher handed them a mobile phone and encouraged them to write a text message containing a question they wanted to know the answer to. (If people had their own phone, we reimbursed them with phone credit.) The text message was then routed to a control room we'd set up in Kampala where a human expert read the text message, typed a response, and sent it back via SMS to the person who asked the question. In the meantime, the interviewer observed and recorded the participant's user experience. This allowed us to record rich qualitative data from hundreds of interviews in just a few days, and to collect quantitative data from hundreds of search queries.
Trying mobile search for the first time
Last week's launch of SMS services in Uganda is the direct result of this research — it's based on listening to what people want and finding a way to get it to them. Our research enabled us to observe first-hand how people instinctively wanted to interact with a mobile phone. We let people select the language they wanted to use. We gained deep insights into the way people formulate their questions and what questions really matter to them. On top of that, we saw the excitement on people's faces when they got their first-ever search results, and we realized that some of the information we could deliver to these users, such as health information, has the power to truly change lives. These new services in Uganda are just one step on the path to providing information to people who have little or no access to the web. This research will help us as we continue to develop more services to increase access to information all around the world.
Posted by Sian Townsend, Mobile User Experience Researcher, and Charles Warren, Mobile User Experience Design Manager
Extending Google services in Africa
June 29, 2009
At Google we seek to serve a broad base of people — not only those who can afford to access the Internet from the convenience of their workplace or with a computer at home. It's important to reach users wherever they are, with the information they need, in areas with the greatest information poverty. In many places around the world, people look to their phones, rather than their computers, to find information they need in their daily lives. This is especially true in Africa, which has
the world’s highest mobile growth rate
and where mobile phone penetration is six times Internet penetration. One-third of the population owns a mobile phone and many more have access to one.
Most mobile devices in Africa only have voice and SMS capabilities, and so we are focusing our technological efforts in that continent on SMS. Today, we are announcing
Google SMS
, a suite of mobile applications which will allow people to access information, via SMS, on a diverse number of topics including health and agriculture tips, news, local weather, sports, and more. The suite also includes
Google Trader
, a SMS-based “marketplace” application that helps buyers and sellers find each other. People can find, "sell" or "buy" any type of product or service, from used cars and mobile phones to crops, livestock and jobs.
We are particularly excited about
Google SMS Tips
, an SMS-based query-and-answer service that enables a mobile phone user to have a web search-like experience. You enter a free form text query, and Google's algorithms restructure the query to identify keywords, search a database to identify relevant answers, and return the most relevant answer.
Both Google SMS Tips and Google Trader represent the fruits of unique partnerships among Google, the
Grameen Foundation
,
MTN Uganda
and local organizations*. We worked closely together as part of Grameen Foundation's
Application Laboratory
to understand information needs and gaps, develop locally relevant and actionable content,
rapidly test prototypes
, and conduct multi-month pilots with the people who will eventually use the applications have truly been a global effort, and created with Ugandans, for Ugandans.
We're just beginning. We can do a lot more to improve search quality and the breadth — and depth — of content on Google SMS, especially on Tips and Trader. Google SMS is by no means a finished product, but that's what's both exciting and challenging about this endeavor.
Meanwhile, if you're curious about what Google is doing in Africa, learn more at the
Google Africa Blog
.
Update:
Corrected link to YouTube video for "rapidly test prototypes".
____
*
BROSDI
, (Busoga Rural Open Source and Development Initiative),
Straight Talk Foundation
,
Marie Stopes Uganda
.
Posted by Joe Mucheru, Head of Google Sub-Saharan Africa, & Fiona Lee, Africa Project Manager
Information poverty
October 15, 2008
Today is
Blog Action Day
, an annual event that rallies blogs around the world to post about a common cause. This year's issue up for discussion is poverty, so we wanted to take a look at the relationship between access to information and social and economic development. The right information at the right time in the hands of people has enormous power. As someone who works for Google, I see evidence of this everyday as people search and find information they need to create knowledge, grow their business, or access essential services. But that applies primarily to the rich world, where economies are built on knowledge and presume access to information. What about the poor and developing countries where people are offline more than online? How do they benefit from the power of information?
In much of Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, rates of economic growth over the last decade have exceeded 5% every year. Despite this trend, poverty in many countries has remained constant. In Kenya, for example, the official poverty rate was 48% in 1981 (World Bank, June 2008). According to the
Kenya Poverty and Inequality Assessment
released by the World Bank this year, 17 million Kenyans or 47% of the population were unable to meet the costs of food sufficient to fulfill basic daily caloric requirements. The vast majority of these people live in rural areas and have even less access to the information that impacts their daily life. Data on water quality, education and health budgets, and agricultural prices are nearly impossible to access.
Despite hundreds of millions of dollars spent each year on providing basic public services like primary education, health, water, and sanitation to poor communities, poverty in much of Sub-Saharan Africa persists. Where does this money go, who gets it, and what are the results of the resources invested? That’s where we find a big black hole of information and a lack of basic accountability. How do inputs (dollars spent) turn into outputs (schools, clinics, and wells), and, more importantly, how do outputs translate into results (literate and healthy children, clean water, etc.)?
We simply don’t know the answers to most of these basic questions. But what if we could? What if a mother could find out how much money was budgeted for her daughter's school each year and how much of it was received? What if she and other parents could report how often teachers are absent from school or whether health clinics have the medicines they are supposed to carry? What if citizens could access and report on basic information to determine value for money as tax payers?
The work of The Social Development Network (SODNET) in Kenya is illustrative. They are developing a simple budget-tracking tool that allows citizens to track the allocation, use, and ultimate result of government funds earmarked for infrastructure projects in their districts. The tool is intended to create transparency in the use of tax revenues and answer the simple question: Are resources reaching their intended beneficiaries? Using tools like maps, they are able to overlay information that begins to tell a compelling story.
Google.org’s role, through
our partners
in East Africa and India, is to support, catalyze, and widely disseminate this kind of information to public, private, and civil society stakeholders that can use it to see more clearly what’s working, what’s broken and what are potential solutions. Leveraging platforms like Google Earth and Google Maps can help organizations disseminate their content widely and let people see and understand what was once invisible. Once information is visible, widely known, and easy to understand, we are betting that governments and citizens will pay more attention to leakages in the service delivery pipeline and feel empowered to propose solutions.
You can’t change what you can’t see. The power to know plus the power to act on what you know is the surest way to achieve positive social change from the bottom up. And when we consider the magnitude of resources invested in delivering public services each year, a 10% improvement globally would exceed the value of all foreign aid. We believe that is a bet worth making.
(Cross-posted from the
Google.org blog
)
Posted by Aleem Walji, Head of Global Development Initiatives, Google.org
TechnoServe in Tanzania
June 11, 2007
Posted by Alex Mkindi, Tanzania Deputy Country Director, TechnoServe
Google.org
supports efforts to promote economic development in developing countries. From time to time we invite guest bloggers from grantee organizations to tell us about their work.
Today in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, TechnoServe and Google.org launched a national business plan competition called "
Believe, Begin, Become
". The program is designed to help Tanzanian entrepreneurs develop skills, obtain seed or expansion capital and establish the networks that help transform their business ideas into successful enterprises that create jobs and other income sources that transform the lives of all Tanzanians.
We know, from our experience in Latin America and other African countries, what this kind of program can provide to entrepreneurs, who gain not only immediate benefits but a crucial business network that carries on long after the competition ends.
Our Organizing Committee colleague
David Bulengo
puts it this way: “The network of professionals and business leaders involved with Believe Begin Become will allow a new generation of young entrepreneurs the chance to learn from their experience and to create wonderful business opportunities.”
If you would like to get involved, please
get in touch
.
Google Apps now south of the Sahara
March 19, 2007
Posted by Francoise Brougher, Business Operations Team
Tens of thousands of university students in Rwanda and Kenya are now on their way to using
Google Apps
. As a result of two separate partnerships that
we've signed today
with the Rwandan Ministry of Infrastructure and the Kenya Education Network, nearly 20,000 students from the
National University of Rwanda
, the
Kigali Institute for Education
and the
Kigali Institute for Science and Technology
, plus 50,000 more from Kenya's
University of Nairobi
, are joining their colleagues at
Northwestern
,
ASU
and
around the world
with access to Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk, and Google Docs & Spreadsheets under their university's domain for free.
Offering Google Apps in Africa means more to us than connecting students and teachers to conduct that special exchange of ideas, innovation and creativity so unique to universities (
we should know
). In Africa and in the developing world, it also means doing our part to make sure that everyone has access to the same services wherever they live, whatever their language, and regardless of income.
We can't be more delighted about our Google Apps partnerships with Rwanda and Kenya, and there are more to come.
Seeing RED
December 1, 2006
Posted by Sheryl Sandberg, VP
You might have noticed from our homepage that today is
World AIDS Day
. We want to remember all those who have suffered from HIV/AIDS in the 25 years since it was first identified, and we want to support everyone working to eradicate this scourge: Today, there are about 40 million people living with HIV worldwide, and it is increasing in every region in the world. In Africa, it is the leading cause of death -- 5,500 Africans die each day from this insidious disease.
One effort that is making a difference is
(RED)
, a company founded this year by Bono and Bobby Shriver. A percentage of the profits from each (RED) product sold is given to
The Global Fund
. We are supporting the (RED) effort by offering promotional support to (RED) and
(RED) products
on Google properties throughout the holiday season.
We hope you choose to support them with your purchases. Companies offering (RED) products have committed to contribute a portion of profits from the sales of that product into Global Fund-financed AIDS programmes in Africa.
Together, let's make a big difference. Read more at
JoinRED.com
or visit the
(RED) blog
.
Know where you are
November 13, 2006
Posted by Terry Garcia, Executive VP Mission Programs, National Geographic
Welcome to
Geography Awareness Week 2006
.
National Geographic has been exploring and inspiring people to care about the planet for more than a century. But today -- with new geo-technologies such as
Google Earth
,
Google Maps
and the National Geographic-ESRI
MapMachine
— anyone hooked into the web can explore any place on Earth at the click of a mouse. Caring begins with seeing, and there’s no better way to see a place than to be there. So we know these new geographic tools mean better stewardship of our world’s extraordinary places, animals, and cultures.
This year we’re celebrating Africa.
My Wonderful World
— the National Geographic-led campaign for geographic literacy — has teamed up with Google to create a new
Geography Awareness Quiz on Google Earth
that lets you test your global IQ as you tour the continent.
All week, we’ll also highlight innovative projects that bring Africa to the rest of the world, such as Michael Fay’s
Megaflyover
,
National
Geographic
magazine’s coverage of Africa on Google Earth, and the
Koobi Fora Research Project
-- on our My Wonderful World
blog
. We hope you’ll join us!
TechnoServe comes to Google
January 30, 2006
Posted by Posted by Bruce McNamer, President and CEO, TechnoServe.org
The
Google Foundation
supports select organizations whose work addresses the challenge of global poverty in ways that are effective, sustainable, and scalable. From time to time we invite guest bloggers from grantee organizations to tell their story.
TechnoServe
helps entrepreneurs in developing countries build successful small and medium enterprises (SMEs) that benefit the world’s poor. (
Watch our video here
.) We provide a hand up, rather than a handout.
Recently, I spent several hours with Googlers who wanted to know more about what TechnoServe is doing in West Africa. I couldn’t help but notice the great, positive energy among Google employees -- a sense that motivated, imaginative, smart people can change the world.
TechnoServe’s engagement with Google involves using business to improve the lives of the world’s poor. SMEs are a major driver of sustained economic growth, creating a ripple effect that creates jobs, boosts incomes and leads to improved social services. But even though they can help reduce poverty, SMEs are precisely what the developing world lacks. These countries are home to many visionary entrepreneurs who are capable of launching and growing successful businesses. But they need help – to make sure their business ideas make sense, to plan and manage their enterprises, to find markets and financing, and to overcome technical challenges.
That’s where TechnoServe comes in. Since its founding, we have helped to create or improve more than 1,200 businesses, benefiting millions of people in 23 countries. We identify entrepreneurial men and women and then guide them in planning, marketing, operating and expanding businesses that are likely to succeed and help the poor. We then leverage these lead entrepreneurs to replicate and/or scale up their businesses and grow competitive, self-sustaining industries. Where necessary, we also tackle constraints in the industries’ enabling environments.
To complement all of this, we also run programs that promote a culture of entrepreneurship. One activity is business plan competitions, which help entrepreneurs turn good ideas into solid businesses. We have run these in Latin America and are now launching them in Africa. And that’s where the Google Foundation comes in: it’s helping us run a
business plan competition in Ghana
this year. All qualified entrants will come away with valuable business training. The winners will also receive vouchers for aftercare services to help them launch or expand their businesses, and 10 winners will also receive cash.
We’re looking forward to having Googlers actively engaged in this project. Our two entrepreneurially-focused organizations have joined forces, which we believe will lead to sustainable solutions for poverty alleviation.
The illuminated continent
September 16, 2005
Posted by Michael Jones, Google Earth CTO
Have you ever dreamed of Africa while reading
National Geographic
? The exotic photographs and thoughtful articles take you there with a magical sense of place. Today we embraced that magic by releasing Google Earth data layers that index
National Geographic
stories, images, journals, and even a live webcam in Africa.
Just start
Google Earth
, enable the National Geographic layers, and begin exploring.
Across Africa, you will see the familiar yellow National Geographic logo. Zoom in to see the title of each feature article or photograph. Click the icon and a pop-up balloon shows a photo and description along with links to the content. Follow those links to read the entire story right where it happened. Not only will you learn about Jane Goodall's Fifi, you'll see her home. Joining the stories and images are layers for National Geographic Sights & Sounds multimedia resources, a live WildCam in Botswana, and a collection of Mike Fay's Megaflyover images.
The Megaflyover images are stunning. Mike spent more than a year taking 92,000 high resolution photographs of the continent. That project is described in
Tracing the Human Footprint
, an article in the September 2005
National Geographic
. He selected 500 of his favorite scenes of people, animals, geological formations, and signs of human presence and annotated them in Google Earth. Look for the red airplane icons as you fly over Africa. Each of these marks a spot where a high resolution image awaits your own personal voyage.
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