With the assistance of the Internet, I diagnosed my chronic heartburn as a symptom of gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) in January. A month of bland food, sleeping at an awkward angle and over-the-counter drugs did not cure me. So I decided to finally see a doctor.
At the hospital, the doctor listened to my symptoms and guessed that I had a bacterial infection, H. Pylori. A test confirmed it. Why hadn’t the information Internet, reliable or otherwise, even hinted at a bacterial infection?
My experience is not entirely unique for patients from the developing world that turn to the web for information about their ailments. Sites focusing on healthcare and wellbeing target Western audiences who may be more likely to have GERD than H. Pylori.
While self-diagnosis based on data from the Internet is already reckless, using information that is meant for people living in another context can be downright dangerous.
Internet giant Google is working with doctors in Nigeria on a project that would customise its health cards service to diseases and treatments that are most relevant to Internet users in the country.
It is a project that will be expanded to the rest of Africa. It also indicative of the realisation among Google and other tech companies that they must build a web that is familiar and relevant to Africans if they are to meet ambitions of drawing in the next billion Internet users.
“We want to help Africans build the Internet they want,” said Caesar Sengupta, Google vice president in charge of the company’s Next Billion Users project.
He was speaking in Lagos at the end of July in an event that was also attended by Google CEO Sundar Pichai. The firm came with goodies, launching a number of services for the first time on the continent and promising more investments in products tailored for Africa.
Nigeria became the second market after India in which customers can access YouTube Go. The service is an “offline” version of YouTube which allows users to preview videos and download them for later viewing, crucial for regions where internet connectivity is expensive and can be unreliable.
The company said it was also populating its search results with localised information on everything from celebrity gossip to local football results. Voice recognition software is being tweaked to understand the nuances of African accents and Google’s virtual keyboard, Gboard, now accommodates at least 16 African languages including Igbo and Kiswahili.
To create an online ecosystem that is familiar to people in the continent, Google realises that it will also need Africans behind the scenes, setting up the technical foundation.
Mr Pichai announced that Google plans to train at least 100,000 African software engineers, initially focusing on Kenya, South Africa and Nigeria. Ten million Africans will be equipped with digital skills over the next five years while the company’s charitable arm, Google.org, is expected to invest Sh2.1 billion ($20 million) in non-profit organisations in the continent.
All these investments could amount to naught if potential users do not have the connectivity and devices to get online. The company is trying to address this problem by moving into fibre through the International Finance Corporation backed vehicle CSquare and there are plans to introduce a $40 mobile device developed in partnership with Japanese mobile manufacturer, Freetel.
Google is not walking an unbeaten path. Tech companies expanding in Africa are customising their products for the continent as they look to grow customer-base and revenues.
Microsoft through its 4Afrika initiative has over the past four years been working on projects meant to spread Internet connectivity and to get cheaper devices into the hands of Africans.
Microsoft piloted Internet provision through television white spaces in Kenya through its 4Afrika programme. The project was supposed to find ways of connecting rural Kenyans cheaply and reliably to the Internet. 4Afrika has also introduced a Windows smartphone specifically for the African market and trained about 800,000 people.
Amid reports that more 90 per cent of Kenyans had read or watched fake news, Facebook earlier this month launched a service to help users detect fake news.
Tips for spotting fake news, in Swahili and English, were published at the top of the News Feed for Facebook’s seven million monthly users in Kenya. Facebook has been trying to woo Africans online with free Internet services under the controversial Free Basics programme.
The tech company has also established 600 wi-fi hotspots in Kenya since March.
The International Telecommunications Union estimates that 47 per cent of the world’s population is online.
Most of those who are offline are in the developing world, particularly in Africa and parts of Asia. ITU also estimates that only about 25 per cent of Africa’s 1.2 billion population has access to the Internet.
Therefore, companies such as Google and Facebook have a lot to gain if they can get even a fraction of this population online.
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