Google announces $3m Google.org grant to support African non-profits

Google on Wednesday announced a $3million Google.org grant to support African non-profits focused on providing CS Education for children in underserved communities, girls and economic empowerment of young people.

Among other things it also announced a speech-based reading tutor app for primary school children, motorcycle and danfo navigation,  others were among the new products and features announced by Google.

The new apps and features by the tech giant are all aimed at making it more helpful to users in Nigeria and across Africa.

Below is a highlight of each of the new products and features:

Bolo: Bolo is a new speech-based reading tutor app for primary grade children. Put simply, it is an app built to help kids learn to read.

New Launchpad Space in Lagos: A first in Africa. This will provide a platform for developers from across Africa to Learn, Connect, and Be Inspired. It follows Google’s 3-year 2017 commitment to provide more than $3 million in equity-free funding, mentorship, and access to expert advisers.

Gallery Go: This a new photo editing and organisation app built from the ground-up for devices with low memory.

Lens in Google Go: This provides translation, text to speech and text search on low-end phones.

New User Interface on Google Maps that focuses on informal transit (danfo) directions, traffic, the busyness of transit system, weather, etc.

Nigerian voice in Google Go: This is to help more people in Nigeria stay up to date and get things done in a way that connects with them.

Motorcycle navigation in Google Maps in Nigeria

Street View in Abuja, Benin City, Enugu, and Ibadan

Google-developed education curriculum on Safer Internet for integration into the Nigerian junior secondary school curriculum. In collaboration with the Public and Private Development Centre (PPDC) and the Nigerian Educational Research & Development Council (NERDC).

Other innovations announced by Google include Africa Certification Scholarship to provide 30,000 scholarships to prepare African developers for entry-level and intermediate roles as software developers.

Winners of Pitch Drive, a three week, five-city Asian tech tour across Singapore, Shenzhen, Hong Kong, Seoul and Tokyo for 10 elite African hardware and advanced technology startups to discover and engage Asian suppliers and manufacturing partners to help grow their businesses, explore funding opportunities and share learnings from the Asian technology market.