Google, a multinational Internet and software corporation specialized in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies through its Nigerian company, Google Nigeria is investing in removing barriers to internet access in the country, Nigeria CommunicationsWeek can report. Juliet Ehimuan, country manager, Google Nigeria, said despite year on year growth in the number of Nigerian’s getting online, there is still a lot of room for growth. Quoting ITU statistics of about 28 per cent of Nigerians online, she said “Google’s effort at the moment is investing in building the online ecosystem.” Ehimuan added that Google is investing in getting more people online, getting more businesses online and getting more schools online. The Google country manager told Nigeria CommunicationsWeek that the company is looking at ways to remove barriers to internet access so that more people can get online. One of such initiatives, she said is the Google Apps Supporting Programme for Nigerian universities through which technical expertise is provided to the university to support them in building their campus network infrastructure. Google provides them with lastmile grants where necessary and pay for international bandwidth for a period of time. The company also provides students and university staff with free software and a lot of training. She said Google nominates students who can become technology evangelists for the university community and provides them with resources to enable them organize events that can create the right awareness and training for other students on campus. “We have done this successfully in seven universities in Nigeria, we have five more in the pipeline and our commitment is to do this for all universities in Nigeria”. Going forward, she said it is very important for local contents to be online so that when people get online they will find it relevant to them. “By this we have been deploying products to support the creation of local contents, an example is Get Nigerian Businesses Online which is a platform for business owners to create a professional website in minutes.” Ehimuan said Google is also helping in getting Nigerian movies, music, arts, fashion shows, educational contents, news, sports, etc on Youtube to promote local contents from Nigeria through video sharing. To ensure a sustainable ecosystem, Google is involved in building capacities in Nigeria by training developers, students and businesses on how they can get the best out of the internet.
Google Nigeria to Remove Barriers to Internet Access
