African Startups, Gidi Mobile & Siyavula Secure $2.5m Grants from Google

Google is committing $50M in Googleorg nonprofit grants to help people prepare for the changing nature of work, out of which $20million will be apportioned to Africa.

It announced on Thursday an initial grants of $2.5 million to the nonprofit arms of African startups Gidi Mobile and Siyavula to provide free access to learning for 400,000 low-income students in Nigeria and South Africa.

Gidi Mobile Ltd is a mobile technology enterprise, which created Gidimo, Africa’s first mobile learning and personal advancement platform.

The startup is on a mission to inspire and enable Africans to achieve their personal advancement goals.

Also, Siyavula is a startup that enables educators create, share, and adapt freely accessible and openly-licensed Open Education Resources (OERs) which are aligned to the South African school Mathematics and Science curricula.

Unlike the vast majority of material which is under a traditional, restrictive copyright license, Siyavula material can be adapted to ensure cultural relevance or refreshed without incurring costs.

In addition to the online, printable resources, Siyavula publishes a range of free Mathematics and Science textbooks.

Speaking in Lagos, Sundar Pichai, chief executive officer of Google, said "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", he said.

Pichai declared that any eligible nonprofit in Africa can apply, and anyone will be able to help select the best ideas by voting online.