Google Africa Announces The G-Nigeria Event

Google Africa yesterday announced the G-Nigeria Day 2010 event on their Google Africa blog. The event is to be held at the University of Lagos from 18 to 20 February. The main objective of the G-Africa events is to help African developers and entrepreneurs build localised applications and implement business ideas using Google technologies. The event is facilitated by Google engineers who take attendees through sessions on the latest Google tools and hands-on codelabs.

Africa has the world’s highest mobile growth rate in the world and Nigeria accounts for 26% of all mobile cellular subscriptions in Africa. According to the ITU Information Society Statistical Profiles 2009, in the period between 2000 and 2008 Nigeria added 10.9 million more Internet users. That’s roughly Zimbabwe’s entire population on the net. Nigeria’s rich mobile and Internet penetration makes it an ideal destination and hub for Google Africa’s developer programs. Nigerian developers and entrepreneurs using Google tools to make neat applications for Nigerians and other Africans will directly result in more advertising dollars for Google.

Similar events have been held in Nigeria before as well as Mauritius and Senegal but according to Google, this is going to be the largest G-Africa event yet. In Uganda, Google is offering Google Trader, a mobile SMS and web based marketplace allowing users to buy and sell goods and services.