Nigeria's Vice President expresses support for Google's "Next Billion Users Plan"
By Nakirfai Tobor - 11 July 2018
Nigeria's Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo, was in Mountain View, California to meet with Sundar Pichai, CEO at Google. Part of their meeting included the Vice President expressing support for Google's Next Billion users plan intended to ensure greater digital access in Nigeria and around the world.
Vice President Osinbajo's meeting with Pichai and the expression of support for Google's plan to connect the next 1 billion users to the Internet is part of Nigeria's Economic Recovery and Growth Plan. As explained by the Office of the Vice President, this is specifically directed at Nigeria's strategy to diversify its economy by making technology an enabler for foreign exchange revenue earnings.
![Professor Yemi Osinbajo Sundar Pichai](/content/images/2018/07/unnamed--2-.jpg)
Nigeria's Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo, with Google's CEO, Sundar Pichai, the the Googleplex in Mountainview, California.
Nigeria has been identified as one of the major countries where the latest generation of Internet users will come from. The future of the Internet is reported to rely on the next billion users. It is also reckoned that the latest generation of Internet users will come online on smartphones in places like Brazil, China, India, Indonesia and Nigeria.
Osinbajo also discussed other areas for Nigeria's possible partnership with Google, including the establishment of Google Artificial Intelligence Centers in Institutions of Higher Learning in Nigeria and the establishment of a YouTube Creator space to support Nigeria's digital content producers and enable them make money with their craft leveraging on YouTube and Google Tools.
Other areas discussed include the expansion of Google's Launchpad Accelerator Program across Afrika. Google has also indicated interest in the policy environment in Nigeria and formulation of policy to encourage partnerships and investments from Google with companies in Nigeria's technology space.
The Vice President later met with a series of key technology investors and also visited the headquarters of LinkedIn where he was the Special Guest at the firm's Fireside Chat in a room packed full of Nigerians in Diaspora among others.
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