I play Geoguessr every day (there's a daily challenge of 5 rounds), so it's a good way to see some of Africa. There's not a lot of Africa on streetview/geoguessr, at least not relative to the size of the continent.
Senegal, Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Botswana, and South Africa/Eswatini/Lesotho have good coverage. Egypt and Tunisia have a little.
Anyway, you get a pretty good sampling of what those countries are like, from the small distant villages to the huge megalopolises.
It's also worth following some African tech people on twitter. Nigeria in particular seems to have a lot of developers and tech entrepreneurs on Twitter.
"One of Google’s goals in Africa is to make the internet more locally relevant and bring more people online. One of the challenges of the internet in Africa is that there is a lack of local content online. At Google, we find that users search for information about local businesses, entertainment, health, etc but often don’t find it because the information is not yet available online. In order to help bring more local content online, Google engineers have created Baraza to allow people in countries across Africa to ask questions and post answers to questions from others."
Seconded. Africa is a bit of an opaque, far-off place to a lot of us, but the idea of going over there and sharing some skills definitely appeals to me.
I'm curious if anyone knows people who would help me bring some efficient ML project work I've done to spheres like Africa. I've visited a couple times and loved being there so much, but definitely feel extremely disjoint from that part of the world. It would be really nice to me to help make some of those connections. <3 :'))))
Although this is for South Africa, Google is really taking initiative in Africa in general. I was part of an MIT student group that Google funds every year to go to different African countries/universities to teach a mobile programming/entrepreneurship course. I went to Rwanda last year and the experience was fantastic. The end of the class culminates in a business plan competition using the technologies and business ideas they have learned with the winners receiving healthy cash prizes to jump start their businesses. It is a pretty amazing program that has seen the birth of lots of successful companies. It's no surprise to me that Google is investing more into Africa.
As someone who lives in Africa, hoorah! More of this please. For me the best feeling is visiting a web page that is almost entirely text based. It loads in a few seconds which feels like quite a rare feeling these days.
"I am a member of the Google Baraza team. One of Google’s goals in Africa is to make the internet more locally relevant and bring more people online. One of the challenges of the internet in Africa is that there is a lack of local content online. At Google, we find that users search for information about local businesses, entertainment, health, etc but often don’t find it because the information is not yet available online. In order to help bring more local content online, Google engineers have created Baraza to allow people in countries across Africa to ask questions and post answers to questions from others.
Here are some quick tasks to try out
- Answer a question on your favorite topic - Find a question by browsing labels (e.g.,"Programming & Design") or Search (e.g., "Economics")
This article bugs me a bit, since it seems to be a "Big Tech Hates Africa" article, whereas I think the reality is more "all large companies are spending minimal resources on poorer areas of the world". It certainly does make Africa look a left out on a map, but large areas of Asia are equally not targeted by large companies, but the geo-political layout is different.
While it is odd that so many large tech companies haven't highlighted their presence in Africa, there are some notable omissions from that list. Microsoft, for example, have clearly listed contact points and targeted support pages all over Africa, including Kenya[1], and SAP has a number of operations across Africa[2].
The reason for Google not listing their Kenya office seems to be to do with the type of office it is[3]. They do have quite a few jobs listed in both Kenya, and the author's own city: Kampala in Uganda[4].
Perhaps when the tech industry matures, we'll see the kind of coverage a large manufacturing company has[5].
Love that we see some tweets from some pretty remote places in Africa - Botwana, Zambia and Malawi. Mobile phones have some pretty big penetration there, but internet connection is still not too strong (texting is far bigger).
Trying to bring all of Africa's info to the internet. First by getting every small {business} website. Looking for a tech co-founder to help me build a website builder with a twist? Next big thing.
I love that Africa is the highest continent (at time of posting) for "learning" and "opportunity." I've seen some articles about entrepreneurs in various African countries and it's always amazing how much impact they're able to have with limited materials, and access to the web can get you a lot.
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