Latest News: Google Announces Major Infrastructure Development for Africa

The tech giant Google announced its plans to invest $1 billion in the development of infrastructure to provide cost-effective and stable internet connectivity throughout Africa. The entire timeline for this project is estimated to be around five years.

The company announced this news via a virtual event, and also launched an investment fund for Africa. This investment fund can provide financial assistance to startups in the form of $50 million. This must be sufficiently allocated in various departments, such as employees, networking, and technology-related arrangements.

These three sectors would get most of the investment, fintech, eCommerce, and services working around local language and content. Nitin Garjria confirmed this in an interview.

Google’s investment can add some real value during strategizing, he further added.

In addition to that, Google formed an association with Kiva (a non-profit organization) to provide loans (worth $10 million) to businesses to overcome Covid-19-related economic hurdles. The area under consideration for this purpose consists of Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, and other South African countries.

This might be a relief to these companies, as the loan processing situation is not ideal in Africa. Small businesses are either unable to provide either collateral or pay the high-interest rates.

Google will also continue to expand its Kenya-based program of collecting payments for 4G phones in installments by working with MTN, Orange, and Vodacom.

For this purpose, the company will work on creating the undersea cable for providing speedy internet services (it’s guaranteed to enhance the speed by 5% and lower the costs by 21%).