In recent years, Google has significantly increased its investment and engagement in Africa, particularly in South Africa, to support digital transformation and economic growth. Our CEO, Sundar Pichai, announced that Google would invest $1 billion in Africa over the next five years to support a range of initiatives, from improved connectivity to investment in startups, to help boost Africa’s digital transformation.
Africa’s internet economy has the potential to grow to $180 billion by 2025 - 5.2% of the continent’s GDP. To support this growth, over the last year we’ve made progress on helping to enable affordable access and on building products for every African user - helping businesses build their online presence, supporting entrepreneurs spur next-generation technologies, and helping nonprofits to improve lives across the continent.
We’d like to share how we’re delivering on our commitment and partnering with others - policymakers, non-profits, businesses and creators - to make the internet more useful to more people in Africa.
Establishing a Google Cloud Region in South Africa
Google is committed to expanding its infrastructure in Africa. Today we’re announcing our intent to establish a Google Cloud region in South Africa - our first on the continent. South Africa will be joining Google Cloud’s global network of 35 cloud regions and 106 zones worldwide.
The future cloud region in South Africa will bring Google Cloud services closer to our local customers, enabling them to innovate and securely deliver faster, more reliable experiences to their own customers, helping to accelerate their growth. Along with the cloud region, we are expanding our network through the Equiano subsea cable and building Dedicated Cloud Interconnect sites in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Lagos and Nairobi. In doing so, we are building full scale Cloud capability for Africa.
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In 2021, Google pledged $1 billion over five years to further this mission. We’ve exceeded that commitment early, investing more than $1 billion which has contributed to the development of reliable, resilient, and secure infrastructure essential for Africans to harness the power of AI.
Today marks another milestone in our commitment to Africa's digital future. Google is announcing four strategic subsea cable connectivity hubs in the north, south, east and west regions of Africa. This investment creates new digital corridors within Africa and between Africa and the rest of the world - ultimately deepening international connectivity and resilience, as well as spurring economic growth and opportunity.
This is the latest addition to our Africa Connect infrastructure program. We’re building vital connectivity across the continent, including the Google Cloud region in Johannesburg serving users across the continent, the Equiano cable running along the entire western seaboard of the continent, and Umoja, the first fiber optic route to directly connect Africa with Australia (running through Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zambia, Zimbabwe and South Africa).
Our investments to date have enabled 100 million Africans to access the internet for the first time, and the Equiano cable alone is expected to increase real GDP this year in Nigeria, South Africa and Namibia by an estimated $11.1 billion, $5.8 billion and $290 million, respectively. We’ve also made Gemini available on Google Distributed Cloud, so more entrepreneurs, businesses, governments and developers can use our advanced AI models from anywhere with enhanced security, reliability and resilience.
Supporting African Entrepreneurs and Small Businesses
Google is dedicated to supporting the growth of African entrepreneurs and small businesses. We continue to support African entrepreneurs in growing their businesses and developing their talent. Our recently announced second cohort of the Black Founders Fund builds on the success of last year’s cohort, who raised $97 million in follow-on funding and have employed more than 500 additional staff since they were selected.
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We’re also continuing our support of African small businesses through the Hustle Academy and Google Business Profiles, and helping job seekers learn skills through Developer Scholarships and Career Certifications.
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Investing in Nonprofits and Community Development
Google has also continued to support nonprofits working to improve lives in Africa, with a $40 million cash and in-kind commitment so far. Over the last year this has included:
- $1.5M investment in Career Certifications this year bringing our total Google.org funding to more than $3M since 2021
- A $3 million grant to support AirQo in expanding their work monitoring air quality from Kampala to ten cities in five countries on the continent;
- A team of Googlers who have joined the Tony Elumelu Foundation for 6 months, full-time and pro-bono. The team helped build a new training web and app interface to support the next million African entrepreneurs to grow and fund their businesses.
Across all our initiatives, we continue to work closely with our partners - most recently with the UN to launch the Global Africa Business Initiative (GABI), aimed at accelerating Africa’s economic growth and sustainable development.
Building Helpful Products for the African Market
Google is focused on developing products that are relevant and useful for the African market. We recently announced plans to open the first African product development centre in Nairobi. The centre will develop and build better products for Africans and the world.
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Today, we’re launching voice typing support for nine more African languages (isiNdebele, isiXhosa, Kinyarwanda, Northern Sotho, Swati, Sesotho, Tswana, Tshivenda and Xitsonga) in Gboard, the Google keyboard - while 24 new languages are now supported on Google Translate, including Lingala, which is spoken by more than 45 million people across Central Africa.
To make Maps more useful, Street View imagery in Kenya, South Africa, Senegal and Nigeria has had a refresh with nearly 300,000 more kilometres of imagery now helping people virtually explore and navigate neighbourhoods. We’re also extending the service to Rwanda, meaning that Street View is now available in 11 African countries.
In addition to expanding the AI Accra Research Center earlier this year, the Open Buildings Project, which mapped buildings across the African continent using machine learning and satellite imagery, is expanding to South and Southeast Asia and is a great example of the AI centre creating solutions for Africa that are useful across the world.
AI Initiatives in Africa
For Africa, home to the world’s largest youth population (slated to double to more than 830 million by 2050), the rapidly expanding capabilities of AI present both a significant opportunity and an urgent call to action.
At Google, we believe that access to AI - which requires not only connectivity and products, but the training to use it - is essential for unlocking opportunities and expanding the innovation capacity of young Africans. AI is how Google delivers on our mission to make information universally accessible and useful, and how we will transform knowledge and learning. With AI, collectively we have the chance to democratize access from the start, ensuring that the digital divide doesn’t become an AI divide, making it helpful for everyone.
Enabling Africa’s young people to learn, innovate and lead is critical to Africa's development and economic growth. That’s why we’re getting advanced AI into the hands of college students (aged 18 or older) in countries across the continent - starting with Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa and Zimbabwe - by offering them a free one-year subscription to our Google AI Pro plan, available in the coming weeks.
With Deep Research, students can save time with custom research reports, providing in-depth information from hundreds of sites across the web. With expanded access to Gemini 2.5 Pro, students can get help with homework or writing and access the full suite of Pro tools, including Guided Learning in Gemini, a new mode that acts as a learning companion.
By providing students with advanced AI tools for research, problem-solving, coding and content creation, we're directly empowering them to address challenges and pursue opportunities specific to the continent, thereby contributing to economic growth and societal progress.
Equipping people with AI skills is critical. To date, we've trained 7 million Africans and plan to train an additional 3 million students, young people, and teachers by 2030. Google is also bolstering local capacity by providing African universities and research institutions with over $17 million in funding, curriculum, training, compute and access to advanced AI models over the past four years, with an additional $9 million planned for the coming year.
Young people have faced barriers accessing knowledge and information, as well as tools and products in African languages, limiting their ability to benefit from them. Last year, we added 110 new languages to Google Translate, including more than 30 African languages. Building on that, we're expanding open datasets, evaluations and voice models for more than 40 African languages, with plans to reach more than 50 languages and publish 24 open speech datasets next year.
Vitality and Google Partnership
Vitality and Google have announced a global partnership to launch Vitality AI. This new platform will integrate Google Cloud's advanced AI and data analytics, with Vitality's vast health datasets and behavior-change expertise, to transform how millions worldwide understand and manage their health. As part of the partnership, Google's AI tools will be applied to Vitality's diverse range of health and lifestyle data to provide a more accurate understanding of an individual's health and lifespan factors.
Through this, Vitality's customers will receive personalized, actionable insights, which are tailored to each individual's unique health, lifestyle, and key risk factors, to help reduce illness and extend healthy years. To provide this tailored and personalized information to customers, Vitality's AI platform will use Google Cloud's Vertex AI platform and Gemini models, integrating them with Vitality's extensive health and lifestyle dataset.
Prior to AI models like Gemini, this level of personalized health advice done at scale was difficult and often too generic to be effective. The goals of this partnership are to extend life expectancy and reduce healthcare associated costs.
The partnership provides opportunities to deepen Vitality´s existing use of Google's Health Connect platform, enabling Vitality members to more easily and securely share health and wellness data from various apps and devices for more seamless and accurate experiences.
The collaboration reinforces a decade-long partnership between Vitality and Fitbit, building on a large active base of connected Fitbit users across key markets. A new, dedicated partnership with YouTube Health, with Vitality looking to build a key global content channel containing trusted health and wellness expertise. This could include building educational resources to empower millions of viewers on their health journeys.
Google will serve as a strategic marketing partner, helping Vitality scale its Vitality AI platform and also support launches in new territories. This includes the opportunity to drive traffic to Vitality's global content channel on YouTube, to deliver trusted health and wellness expertise with paid media amplification.
Recognizing that chronic health conditions account for the vast majority of all healthcare costs, this partnership is set to reduce these costs by empowering individuals to take proactive steps. Benefits are expected to be particularly significant for older adults (over 50) and those with chronic conditions, offering tailored advice and incentives.
The partnership is set to significantly boost early diagnosis and prevention through personalized screening recommendations. Recognizing screening as a key tool for early detection, better treatment, and reduced mortality, the platform's ability to recommend it appropriately will have a major impact.
Based on Vitality's current insights, personalized screening, backed by clinical and lifestyle data, has already led to a 5.5x increase**** in screening rates in fully funded healthcare environments and a 19% improvement in early cancer detection.
| Screening Type | Increase in Completions (2024 YTD vs 2025 YTD) |
|---|---|
| Vitality Health Check | 5% to 27% |
| Prostate Cancer Screenings | 5% to 25% |
| Mammograms | 10% to 21% |
Google Adwords in South Africa
South Africa has got a population of 57 millions and also 30 millions Internet users 30 millions people make use of internet in South Africa that has a total residents of 57 millions. Google Adwords business in South Africa is well established and your opportunity to reach 30 millions million Internet users is therefore vital South Africa has been performing impressive with regards to Google Adwords marketing therefore reaching 30 millions million net users is significant for a company.
You can target your advertising in: English, Afrikaans and Southern Ndebele English, Afrikaans and Southern Ndebele might be targeted for your advertisements). In the area Pretoria, your ad campaigns could have a great impact People in the capital Pretoria can be expected to have best influence.
The best known domain name extension in India is the ".za", it is important for the localization of the Google Adwords adsYou have to put emphasis on the localization of the advertisements simply because ".za" is the most famous domain name extension in India. Your Adwords campaigns can be paid in South African rand right into your Google Adwords account You may pay for your Adwords campaigns conveniently in South African rand through your Adwords account).
You can simply automate your Adwords campaigns using InstaonInstaon can make your task much easier by automating your Adwords campaigns.
Eswatini's Partnership with Google
Eswatini has embarked on a significant partnership with Google to drive its digital transformation and economic growth. This initiative is part of a broader trend of African nations embracing digital transformation to stimulate economic development. Google has been instrumental in supporting such efforts across the continent.
“This partnership is a step towards positioning Eswatini as a leader in the digital economy, unlocking opportunities for our people, especially the youth,” Maziya said at the launch event themed ‘Innovating Together: Strategic Partnerships for Eswatini’s Digital Transformation and Economic Prosperity’.
“This collaboration symbolises a shared vision of leveraging innovation to transform Eswatini into a digital hub that competes globally. In line with these objectives, Google has launched various programs to bolster digital skills and innovation. The partnership between Google and the Southern African country also underscores the potential for smaller African nations to leverage technology for development.
Education stands to gain substantially from such collaborations. Access to digital resources can enhance learning experiences and bridge educational gaps, particularly in remote areas. Eswatini’s alliance with Google represents a strategic move towards embracing digital transformation.
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