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Google Records First 10m Internet Users in Nigeria

By Peter Ugwu
21 August 2015   |   9:20 am
Google has disclosed the geometric progressions in the number of internet users in Nigeria, as about 10milion visited the internet for the first time in 2014. Caesar Sengupta, vice president, Product Management at Google, made the disclosure during AndroidOne launch in Nigeria, adding that, globally, there are 3billion people connected online and the number is…

GoogleGoogle has disclosed the geometric progressions in the number of internet users in Nigeria, as about 10milion visited the internet for the first time in 2014.

Caesar Sengupta, vice president, Product Management at Google, made the disclosure during AndroidOne launch in Nigeria, adding that, globally, there are 3billion people connected online and the number is expected to surpass 4billion by 2017.

According to him, “Nigerians are not left out in the internet revolution as finding by Google showed that 10million Nigerians came online, for the first time, in 2014”.

He added that Google sees Nigeria’s internet economy as real with enticing, data-friendly and life-impacting applications such as Trupper, Okada Books, Gidimo, Afrinolly, among others changing the way face social lives in the country.

He said, “Google is simply helping the world organize information and make it accessible in different languages, even when it comes from different regions. The information we are talking about exists in books, libraries of different universities, mines; ours is to provide opportunity for the massage of the knowledge, no matter where you are in the world, but let it impact what you do”.

On her part, Juliet Ehimuan-Chiazor, country manager of Google, said with 140 million active mobile lines; 35% of the 19 million phones sold in 2014 were smartphone implying a 100% year-on-year growth, Nigeria will benefit more from the global internet economy.

She reechoed that, in the African most populous nation, 65% of the local search volume happens on mobile and over 50 million internet users with 800% more Nigerians are online since 2005, even as 10 million Nigerians came online for the first time in 2014.

Ehimuan-Chiazor, “In Nigeria and Africa in general, we are focused on working with the Government, organizations (both large corporations and SMEs) and developers’ community to finding lasting solutions to challenges faced by institutions.

Ehimuan-Chiazor further said, “In Nigeria, for example, we have deployed IT facilities in 50 universities. And we are not relenting on the efforts to bring local contents online. It is only through the internet that local contents gain global relevance with less stress. Therefore, Nollywood contents are gaining global attention via the internet, especially the YouTube channel.

“We have been uploading Nigerian maps online too. We have mapped about 250,000 meters of roads (maps) and over 200,000 special locations. Google is focused on impacting lives in Africa; that is the bottom-line of the gestures.

On entrepreneurship, she said, over 10,000 developers and SMEs have been inspired through Google programmes in the past years.

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