Google is betting a billion dollars on Africa’s digital future
By Kristin Houser | Published: 2024-12-29 16:00:00 | Source: The Present – Big Think
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It’s 2030, and more than two-thirds of the population of sub-Saharan Africa is now connected to the Internet. While Internet access helps populations combat poverty, disease, illiteracy and more, a sustained effort will be needed to ensure that the benefits of technology outweigh its potential harms.
The “Digital Contract” in Africa
It’s been 55 years since a team of researchers at UCLA sent a message from a computer the size of their university room to another massive machine at Stanford University, giving birth to the technology that would eventually become the Internet.
Since then, computers have become small enough to carry in our pockets, and wires have become optional Two-thirds of the world’s population is now connected to the Internet.
For individuals, Internet access means opportunities in employment, education, health care, and more that are not available to those who remain offline. At the national level, digital connectivity typically translates to A more productive workforce, Higher standard of livingAnd economic growth.
These benefits are currently out of reach for the majority of people in sub-Saharan Africa, where internet usage is currently only minimal 37%But technology giant Google expects that the next ten years will be the region’s next ten years.Digital contract“.
To see what this could mean for sub-Saharan Africa, let’s take a look at the history of digital technology on the continent, how Google is working to live up to its own predictions, and what it can do to help ensure that internet access is a net positive for Africa’s most vulnerable populations.
Where were we?
Where are we?
Not only does Sub-Saharan Africa — the part of the continent below the Sahara Desert — have the lowest Internet usage in the world. It is also home to Majority From the world Least developed countries (LDCs).
These countries are characterized by low GDP and populations suffering from high levels of poverty, malnutrition, illiteracy, gender inequality, and other barriers to sustainable development. Can access the Internet Help break down these barriersbut least developed countries have particularly low rates of Internet use, with Only 27% From its online population.
Internet access is not the only area where LDCs lag behind. Advances in technologies enabled by the Internet, such as artificial intelligence, are advancing rapidly in developed countries, and according to the United Nations, the gap between countries with the most advanced technology and those with the least It is actually expanding.
“The next decade is set to be the digital decade in Sub-Saharan Africa.”
Matt Brittain
Getting sub-Saharan Africans online is the first step to closing this gap, and although internet usage numbers are still low, the region is He is Heading in the right direction – funded by Google Reported by the public firsta public policy research agency, has predicted that more than half of the region’s population will be online by 2026.
“The next decade is set to be sub-Saharan Africa’s digital decade – with emerging technologies expected to dramatically accelerate the pace of development on the continent,” Matt Brittain, Google’s head of EMEA, predicted in a report. October 2024 blog post.
Where are we going (maybe)
To bridge the digital divide, the region first needs access to affordable, high-speed internet. Its residents then need to be taught the skills needed to benefit from the digital world.
Since opening its first office in sub-Saharan Africa in 2007, Google has invested millions to help provide access and education to the region — partnering with manufacturers to make… Cheap smartphones To the African market, help millions of Africans reach Digital tools and trainingand Beni Equiano, A Undersea cable Accelerating the relationship between Africa and Europe.
In 2021, the tech giant announced its biggest initiative yet: A Investment of $1 billion Over the next five years in the “digital transformation” in Africa.
“This research underscores the importance of our investments.”
Alex Okosi
google sYes I’ve already spent it $900 million for projects In Africa in the three years since the investment was announced, and according to a report commissioned by Public First to look at its impact on sub-Saharan Africa, it is on track to achieve the $1 billion target by 2026.
Among other things, the investment funds were used to open new AI laboratories in the Ghana and Kenya Fund Initiatives Designed to support African founders, creating Africa’s first Google Cloud region. And the first one Google Product Development Center.
“This research underscores the importance of our investments,” Alex Okwusi, Google’s managing director for sub-Saharan Africa, wrote in the introduction to the report. “Public First found that every dollar invested in digital technology in the region will generate more than $2 in economic value by 2030, with a greater return in leading countries.”
“We don’t want to leave anyone behind”
Alex Okosi
In May 2024, Google announced its next big project as part of the investment: building Umoja The first undersea fiber optic cable Between Africa and Australia. According to Okosie, this will help address the two biggest barriers to bridging the digital divide in the region: high data costs and connectivity challenges.
“Investing in infrastructure like Equiano and Umoja will help reduce these costs and enable businesses to take advantage of this digital highway that enables them to be more efficient.” He told CNN.
“We still need to partner with last-mile operators to make sure that they take advantage of this new bandwidth, and that it brings the cost down so that the consumer feels it,” Okosi added. “We don’t want to leave anyone behind, and the only way to ensure that is to make sure the cost of data is low.”
In addition to sharing an update on its $1 billion investment, Google also recently announced that its philanthropic arm, Google.org, Commit $5.8 million In grants “to support AI skills and education across sub-Saharan Africa.”
These funds will help ensure that Africans are able to benefit from the technology once they have it Raspberry Pi Foundationa UK-based charity focused on promoting computer science education, is one of its benefactors.
“In Africa, we are partnering with Young Scientists Kenya and the Data Scientists Network Foundation to spread AI literacy education to young Kenyans and Nigerians,” a foundation spokesperson told Freethink of its plans for the grant.
“Young people need to be more than just consumers of technology. They must be digital champions, able to confidently engage with and shape the digital world.”
A spokesperson for the Raspberry Pi Foundation
This will include education Lessons About different types of artificial intelligence, how machine learning can be used to solve problems, and the limitations of the technology. These lessons will be designed specifically for “students between the ages of 11 and 14 with a focus on those from underserved communities,” according to a spokesperson for the foundation.
The Raspberry Pi Foundation is also launching several new products resources Focused on AI safety in Africa. One of these topics, “AI and Your Data,” is designed to get students thinking about how data is shared with applications in the age of AI, while another focuses on how AI can be used to perpetuate and combat… Wrong information.
“Young people need to be more than just consumers of technology,” the spokesperson told Freethink. “They must be digital champions, able to confidently engage with and shape the digital world.”
Avoid pitfalls
The idea of Africans as consumers of technology highlights a fundamental motivation for Google and other tech companies to help bridge the digital divide in places like sub-Saharan Africa: more people online means more people using their products, which ultimately means greater profits.
“The US tech giants have recognized the current gaps in connectivity and the need for additional investments associated with this as a big business opportunity,” said Tevin Taves, a data scientist at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies. He told the German channel DW.
“Prominent examples of this are Google and Meta, whose major cable projects aim to reduce the cost of accessing their services in a largely untapped African market,” he continued.
This investment may seem like a win-win on the surface – Africans gain access to the digital world, while tech companies gain access to more customers – but the reality may be more complex, given the downside of the Internet and modern technology.
“Almost every day brings new stories of the spread of hate on social media, violations of privacy by companies and governments, cyberattacks using weaponized digital technologies, or states violating the rights of political opponents,” the UN High-level Panel on Digital Cooperation said. he wrote in a 2019 report.
These effects can be felt by technology users around the world, and it is not clear how we can effectively address them in developed countries like the United States, let alone regions like sub-Saharan Africa, where resources are scarce and much of the population is already incredibly vulnerable.
Joining the digital world also puts people living in least developed countries at risk of experiencing “digital extraction,” a practice that includes exploitation of human rights. Data and exhaustionaccording to funding from Stanford University a report By researchers at Pollicy, a civic technology organization based in Uganda.
“Technology companies have exploited minimal data protection legislation and local competition to create large-scale software communications solutions for the African market to collect user data,” the authors wrote.
Policy researchers add that they also “recruit digital workers from locations, such as within Africa, where labor is cheaper to hire or where labor laws may be weaker in a practice referred to as labor arbitrage.”
There are ways to prevent this exploitation and protect Africans who use the internet now, according to Policy: Campaigns could be organized to raise awareness of consumer rights among new internet users, for example, and strengthening trade unions could help give digital workers more bargaining power.
Ultimately, though, while the United States and other developed countries may have a head start in places like sub-Saharan Africa, the Internet, artificial intelligence, and other digital technologies are still relatively new inventions, and we’re all trying to figure out how to maximize their benefits while minimizing their harms — a particularly daunting task given how quickly technology is evolving.
As we navigate the ever-changing landscape of this digital world, stakeholders will need to pay particular attention to protecting the most vulnerable new residents through initiatives such as those proposed by Pollicy and those led by the Raspberry Pi Foundation in order to ensure that Africa’s Digital Decade lives up to Google’s optimistic expectations for it.
this condition Originally published by our sister site Freethink.
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