Google throws weight behind new media in Africa

Google this year will bring four speakers and trainers to the influential pan-African journalism gathering, Highway Africa, to be held in Grahamstown at the start of July.

Andrew Bangs, Community Marketing representative at YouTube will speak about the rise of citizen journalism across the globe, and the significance of the internet in enabling free expression and ground-breaking reporting.

Participants will be able to attend training workshops on Google Search and other useful applications to aid their information-gathering, including Google Scholar, Translate, Books, News, Trends and more.

The workshops are being run in collaboration with Izak Minnaar of the SABC, who has offered computer-aided journalism courses at previous conferences. Participants will also have the opportunity to get hands-on experience using Google’s numerous geographic products, particularly Google Maps, which has now been launched across 32 Sub-Saharan African countries.

Google representatives will include Ravi S. Yadavilli, head of Geo Content operations at Google and a key player in Google’s efforts to map Africa; Jacqueline Rajuai, a GIS Specialist from the Google Kenya office, who focuses on enriching Google Maps content across the continent; and Julie Taylor, Communications and Public Affairs Manager for Google South Africa.

Google’s innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every day. In Africa, the company is focusing on making the internet more relevant and useful to Africans by creating more African content online; raising awareness among consumers and businesses about the opportunities offered by the internet; and developing products that are meaningful to Africans.

Recent efforts in the past year to strengthen web developer communities include training for hundreds of developers and entrepreneurs at Google events in Ghana, Senegal, Nigeria and Mauritius.

In South Africa, Google recently announced the launches of Street View in Google Maps, and a local YouTube domain.

More on Google in Africa, on its official blog.