Google last week hosted content creators, developers, media, influencers and educators at a product showcase in Lagos.
Dubbed the NBU House, Google built the House to give users a chance to interact with the products it has developed specifically for the Next Billion Users (NBU) of the internet. Currently only 36.1 per cent of Africans have access to the internet, according to Internet World Stats.
Google’s NBU initiative is a company-wide drive to make its products and features more relevant to the emerging markets, taking into account the access challenges experienced by people in Africa.
Speaking at the event, Juliet Ehimuan-Chaizor, Google country director, Nigeria, said that: “Google’s mission has always been to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. Google’s NBU Initiative aims to further its mission of creating a more inclusive internet by creating products and features that are tailored to the needs of people in countries where they experience the internet on a mobile first and have data, network and hardware constraints. Today’s event serves to showcase the progress we have made so far.”
Featuring a combination of lightning talks and walk-through demos, visitors to the NBU House had a chance to learn about and experience the 8 NBU products Google has announced in Sub Saharan Africa to date – Google Go, Gmail Go, Android Go, Maps Go, YouTube Go, Datally, Files by Google and Google Station.