Official Google Africa Blog: 2022

Meet The YouTube Black Voices Creator, Artist, Singer and Songwriter Class of 2023

Tuesday, November 15, 2022

YouTube Black Voices Fundlaunched short filmstopped Billboard chartsbeen nominated forwon

We’re honored to equip the talented creatives with resources to fuel their creativity. In the coming months, we will work closely with these creators by offering dedicated partner support from YouTube and seed funding to help them develop their channels and grow on our platform. They will also have opportunities to participate in bespoke training, workshops, and networking programs.

We built the YouTube Black Voices Fund to invest with an intention to present fresh narratives that emphasize the intellectual power, authenticity, dignity, and joy of Black voices, as well as to educate audiences about racial justice. This initiative also includes investing in the impact of our platform, and over the program, we've directly empowered more than 500 creators and artists from across the world to support, grow, and fund their channels and content development. In addition to the YouTube Black Voices Fund grantees who partner with YouTube directly, we’ll continue to support and connect with the wider global Black diaspora and communities through a wide range of programming and events.

The YouTube Black Voices Fund is only one facet of the comprehensive work currently underway to make YouTube a place where Black artists, creators, and users can feel empowered to share their stories. We continue to make product and policy changes to meet that goal and recently provided an update on our work to make YouTube a more inclusive platform, including how we handle harmful and hateful comments.

We can’t wait for you to hear more from the Class of 2023 as they continue embarking on their journeys as creators and artists, sharing their stories and their music!

Below is our full list of the #YouTubeBlackVoices 2023 creator class from Sub-Saharan Africa.

Click to learn more about the creators who are joining the YouTube Black Voices Class of 2023: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Brazil, and Africa.
Click to learn more about the artists, songwriters, and producers who are joining the YouTube Black Voices Music Class of 2023.

Posted by Alex Okosi, Managing Director, Emerging Markets, YouTube

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Telling powerful African stories through colour

Thursday, November 3, 2022

Editor's note:

Ravi Naidoo, the creator of the Interactive Africa and Design Indaba, an annual three-day design conference held in Cape Town, South Africa, contributed today's post. He discusses the Colours of Africa project, which showcases the best of African craft, product, industrial design, fashion, film, animation, graphic, cuisine, music, jewellery, and architecture.

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Colors of Africa
At the same time we asked what being African meant to them. The resulting works and thoughts offer personal insights into African lived experiences and add the ever evolving kaleidoscope that is the African continent.

The stories of each creative have been woven into a colourful tapestry which is available on Google Arts & Culture. And this bespoke, online exhibit dives into the artist’s experience of their country – as well grappling with the intricacies of identity. In addition to the exhibits, you can spin the kaleidoscope to explore and collect the colours of Africa. Experience the different countries and travel through Africa guided by the eyes of local artists.

Each work is a personal and completely unique experience of a country. Discover some of the colours of Africa below:

I invite you to discover more about each artist and artwork on the dedicated hub on Google Arts & Culture, or travel through the kaleidoscope here and share your colours with the world.

Posted by Ravi Naaido, Founder & CEO, Design Indaba,

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How building a YouTube channel helped a Muslim influencer on his faith journey

Monday, October 31, 2022

Sharing religious advice online comes with a lot of responsibility and that’s not something Nasiruddin Shuraim Abdulmumin takes lightly. The 27-year-old YouTuber and TedX speaker started a channel called Did You Know Studios in 2016 to share his faith with his followers. Since then, he’s been interviewing some of the most influential figures in the world of Islam, touching on many taboo topics and educating his community about his religion.

Having studied Islamic Theology at Al-Hikmah University, Shuraim knew he wanted to share a religious message but he wanted to deliver it differently, and YouTube became his platform of choice. So after his first interview with Mufti Menk, a scholar twice listed as one of the ‘500 Most Influential Muslims in the world’, he knew he had found his purpose. In 2017 Shuraim was invited to perform a pilgrimage as a guest of the King of Saudi Arabia.

As his popularity grows, we spoke to Shuraim about why young people trust influencers more than religious institutions and how starting his channel helped him on his own personal faith journey.

Why did you choose YouTube to share your spirituality?
For me, YouTube was the easiest and least stressful way to spread my message. The restrictions that come from broadcasting on TV, for example, don’t exist with YouTube. There’s a lot more freedom and I think that’s very important when it comes to a topic like religion. You need to be able to speak freely and honestly. That is something I pride myself on - talking about issues that some people may consider controversial or taboo.

Why would you say it’s very important to share some of the more taboo topics you discuss?
Well, the question I always ask myself is: If I don't talk about it, then who will? The reason why I’m doing this is that I want people to be enlightened. I want them to feel comfortable coming forward with their troubles, talking about them and seeking help. The journey of enlightenment means answering difficult questions about behaviours and talking about things that make us uncomfortable. So If I’m not ready to cover taboo topics, then what would be the point of having this channel?

With almost half a million views on your YouTube channel, how do you plan to grow your social profile to reach more followers?

I am proud that my channel has grown very organically without any marketing. It’s gone from one subscriber to about 9000, and I think it’s because I’m offering something unique to my audience. However, I would like to reach a larger audience online so I’m planning to bring in some social media experts who can help me build my online following.

Have you used Google’s tools, programmes or training to help your channel grow and be discoverable online?
Google Search helped me a lot, especially in the early stages of starting my channel. I Googled so many different things to find inspiration for content, to see what other people were doing in the religious space and to watch how TV hosts conducted interviews. I believe that every young person needs someone to take them somewhere within themselves that they cannot get to by themselves. However, sometimes you don't have that person to hold your hand, so I used Google as a starting point to help discover and explore different ways I could share my spiritual message.

Has starting this channel helped with your personal faith journey?
Most definitely. Some people think that a lot of spiritual leaders just grew and became spiritual. But that’s not always the case, it’s a journey. When I’m interviewing my guests on YouTube, I’m learning from them too. These interviews are changing my whole perspective on life. I’ve learnt new behaviours, such as praying more regularly and I’ve learnt more about the person I want to become. Sharing my faith online has certainly helped me become a better human being and helped me become a better leader in my community. These are all things that I didn’t expect to happen when starting a YouTube channel. As I’ve grown within my own personal faith, it has made me feel more responsible. I intentionally make careful decisions for myself and the brand. For example, now that we have a studio, we can make better editing choices like deciding after a shoot that the content isn’t right for our audience. We can choose whether or not to release a video depending on if it’s beneficial to my community.

Do you feel like you have a responsibility to your YouTube audience to provide advice and guidance?
I do feel responsible, and that's why I'm very careful about who I choose to talk to on the channel. We carefully research each topic we feel is relevant and timely from sexuality to addictions and body issues. These are not just topics for Muslims, but for a wider audience too. People like myself, with a community that relies on us and trusts us for information and advice, should feel responsible because we have a duty to our audience.

Why do you think young people’s trust in religious institutions is low, but trust in religious influencers is still high?
Young people’s trust in religious institutions may be low right now but religious institutions are extremely important. They provide knowledge that is incalculable and forever valuable. Young people may tend to put religious scholars on a pedestal that seems out of reach while religious influencers like me are committed to making followers feel more comfortable and understood because we talk to them in a very relatable, human way. This often means when the scholars do something we disagree with or make a mistake, we lose all trust in them forgetting that they are human beings too. As influencers, we do need to be careful because people are looking up to us. We need to keep educating ourselves and be more prudent and sincere in whatever we do.

With many Muslim influencers growing large digital followings, what is the future of the faith in the digital age?
I don't think it's going to be very different, but it will definitely improve. Nowadays, a lot of people are sharing their religious knowledge online, and we even opened an online school during the Coronavirus pandemic. We had about 4000 students globally, Muslims and non-Muslims, and we had scholars from all over the world offering free classes for anyone interested in learning more about Islam. It really showed us that people are ready and willing to learn more about religion. That’s why we need to encourage as many clerics as possible to understand the importance of social media. Because we are in a time where a lot of people are very comfortable with learning and understanding faith digitally. So we need to make sure that the people who are experts in this field, who are maybe from a different or older generation, can reach audiences in person as well as online.

What would be your advice for young people hoping to engage with spirituality today?
My first piece of advice is to be open-minded. You can learn about religion from a range of different people, regardless of their faith. Secondly, as a young person, I think it’s important to find a mentor. Someone who will be there for you, who will guide you, who will love you sincerely and help you as much as they can on your spiritual journey. Thirdly, attaining spirituality doesn't mean you have to forget your humanity. Instead, you should be embracing it. Embrace how fickle you are, how imperfect you are and embrace your mistakes. It will bring you closer to the spiritual person you want to become. Finally, be patient with yourself during your personal journey. Focus less on societal pressures and be more self-accountable.

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Helping African job seekers prepare for interviews

Wednesday, October 26, 2022

Over the next five years, 300 million people will come online in Africa. Many of them are young, creative, and entrepreneurial, ready to drive new innovation and opportunity across the region. That’s why, in 2017, we committed to help 10 million Africans get the digital skills they need to grow their careers and businesses. So far, we’ve trained six million people through Grow With Google programs, including Google Career Certificates, which help people learn the skills they need to qualify for roles in fast-growing fields like data analytics, digital marketing & e-commerce, IT support, project management and UX design.

But just as important as learning the skills to perform a new job, is learning the skills to land that job. This means knowing how to network, apply, build a resume and complete one of the most intimidating parts of a job search: the interview.

Interviewing in a new field can be hard, especially if you don’t have access to friends, family or mentors in the field who can help you practise and prepare. That’s why we’ve been collaborating with job seekers to build a new tool called Interview Warmup. It lets you practise answering questions selected by industry experts, and it uses machine learning developed by Google Research to transcribe your answers and help you discover ways to improve. Preparing for interviews will always take a lot of work, but we hope this tool can make it a little easier for anyone to become more confident and grow comfortable with interviewing.

On a white background, a waving hand emoji bounces next to text that reads “Hi! Let’s practise a job interview.” The view zooms out to show the interface of the Interview Warmup tool. A white pointer scrolls through six career fields, selects “IT Support” and is prompted to answer an interview question. The tool transcribes the user’s response and analyses it. The pointer clicks “most-used words,” highlighting words used multiple times. The pointer clicks one of those words to get suggestions about other words to use instead. The backdrop is plain white once more and text reading “Interview Warmup'' bounces on screen.

With Interview Warmup, your answers are transcribed in real time so you can review what you said. You’ll also see insights: patterns detected by machine learning that can help you discover things about your answers, like the job-related terms you use and the words you say most often. It can even highlight the different talking points you cover in each answer, so you can see how much time you spend talking about areas like your experience, skills and goals. Your responses aren’t graded or judged and you can answer questions as many times as you want. It’s your own private space to practise, prepare and get comfortable.

Interview Warmup was designed for Google Career Certificates learners, so it has question sets specific to each of the certificates. But it’s available for everyone to use and has general questions applicable to many fields. Every question has been created by industry experts. We’re sharing the tool in its early stages so we can get feedback from the community, find ways to improve it and expand it to be more helpful to more job seekers.

We’re excited about tools like Interview Warmup because they show how new technologies have the potential to help more people practise the skills they need to grow their careers. Alongside programs like Google Career Certificates, Google Africa Developer Scholarships, and Digital Skills for Africa, these tools can help support the development of the African workforce and create more opportunities for African job seekers.

Try Interview Warmup now at grow.google/interview-warmup.

Supporting African news organisations who are advancing media literacy

Tuesday, October 25, 2022

Today, 72% of people surveyed in Kenya and Nigeria express concern about being exposed to false and misleading information. The interconnectedness of the spread of news and information today calls for each of us to play a role in advocating for media literacy.

Our work at Google supports both journalists and fact-checking organisations who are doing the work to fight misinformation, and we help to create products and tools to help news consumers around the world better understand what they are seeing online.

Today, we’re rolling out additional initiatives through the Google News Initiative (GNI) that will help African journalists and publishers to navigate the challenges and opportunities of changing news habits.

Product Innovation
Google is at its heart a technology company. We’ve invested in product features to support the fight against the spread of misinformation online and to advance media literacy. One example is About this Result, a feature in Search which provides critical context on a result before you visit the page, including how widely a source is circulated, whether a company is owned by another entity - all pieces of information that can provide important context.

In Africa, we’re working with media lab Fathm (our partners in the UK) and publishers The Daily Maverick (South Africa), Premium Times (Nigeria) and The Standard Group (Kenya) to trial an entirely new way of delivering news to people across the continent. This pilot of ‘direct publishing’ will help innovative news outlets create interactive stories combining images, video and text and publishing them directly to users within the Android Messages app. The trial uses Android’s Rich Communication Service (RCS) to deliver news in Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa.

"Direct publishing is an exciting prospect that has the opportunity to enhance our brand of journalism,” said Styli Charalambous, CEO & Co-Founder of the Daily Maverick. “Digital offerings that go beyond passive consumption have the potential to elevate the service of journalism and attract new audiences. This project is innovative, with the potential to augment our offering and deliver on our mission. We jumped at the chance when asked."

Fact Checking
Africa Check was the first independent fact-checking organization established on the continent, and with support from Google they were able to both scale their training efforts across eastern Africa and help strengthen the local fact checking ecosystem. Africa Check will begin hosting ‘train the trainers’ fact-checking workshops, designed to improve the quality of information relied upon by millions of news consumers in Eastern Africa.

"We train and mentor journalists in fact-checking to ensure that information shared with the wider public is accurate and verified,” said Dudu Mkhize, Head of Outreach at Africa Check. “Google will support our train-the-trainer programme to ensure that we have more trainers to train journalists across Africa, which will strengthen the information ecosystem on the continent as more journalists have the necessary skill to fact-check their reports."

The trainers from this program will go on to support journalists working in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Uganda, Zimbabwe and Angola, providing guidance on fact checking, verification tools and techniques.

Additionally, equipping journalists with the digital skills to find, verify and tell news stories online is critical. That’s why Dubawa will train 500 journalists in Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and The Gambia with support from the GNI. The workshops will focus on equipping journalists with the digital skills to find, verify and tell news stories online.

“Our mission at CJID and Dubawa is to enable a West African media that promotes democratic accountability for sustainable development,” said Dr. Tobi Oluwatola, Executive Director at the Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development (CJID). “We're excited that this partnership allows us to scale our fact checking and digital literacy capacity building to benefit hundreds of journalists across Anglophone West Africa.”

Fact checking is critical even as information becomes more accessible globally. By supporting the ‘Africa Facts’ conference to be held in November in Nairobi, we want to help connect ideas and expert practitioners, and further strengthen fact checking across the continent.

These new initiatives build on the media literacy training programme, WebRangers, that we facilitate with Media Monitoring Africa, focused on training teens in South Africa on how to identify and report misinformation.

We believe the future of news across Africa is bright and support for it is critical. We are eager to continue finding ways to connect people to relevant and quality news across the region.

Posted by Dorothy Ooko, Head of Communications & Public Affairs, Google, Africa

Preserving one of Nigeria's last sacred groves

Monday, October 24, 2022

Editor's note:

The Honorable Minister of Information and Culture for the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, authors this piece in which he talks about the new Osun Osogbo project by Google Arts and Culture, in collaboration with CyArk and the Adunni Olorisha Trust / Osun Foundation Redefining, which exhibits this sacred UNESCO World Heritage Site and makes it accessible to everyone online.

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On the forested banks of the Osun river in Osogbo, Nigeria lies one of the last cultural sites of its kind. In this sacred grove, Yoruba deities are embodied in shapely, sculpted shrines and creativity and spirituality come to life. The Osun Osogbo Sacred Grove is a truly unique and special place.

I’m truly delighted that, for the first time ever, the shrine and its surroundings have been digitized thanks to a collaboration between CyArk, Adunni Olorisa Trust/Osun Foundation and Google Arts & Culture. Now both are protected for posterity, so anybody from anywhere can explore them.

I said when I visited in 2019 that it was important to refocus national and global attention on this site, and I’m glad we achieved our purpose. For even though this place of active worship and art is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and priceless cultural asset, it is in danger of destruction. Flooding and heavy rain due to climate change, along with a number of other risks to conservation, threaten the groves’ survival.

This is why CyArk and the Adunni Olorisha Trust / Osun Foundation partnered with Google Arts & Culture to digitize the shrines and surroundings at Osun Osogbo Sacred Grove – and to tell the stories of its spiritual, artistic and cultural significance. In 2019, the grove’s Busanyin Shrine was wrecked in a flood; the 3D imagery captured in the early phases of the project were among the last images to be taken of the site before it was destroyed. So while this project may not stop the impact of flooding or the activities of land grabbers, it will ensure that future generations can see it as it is today.

3D modelsSacred Grove of Osun OsogboHeritage on the EdgeGoogle Arts & CultureCyArkScotlandBangladeshTanzaniaPeruRapa Nui

Africa Blog

Meet The YouTube Black Voices Creator, Artist, Singer and Songwriter Class of 2023

Telling powerful African stories through colour

How building a YouTube channel helped a Muslim influencer on his faith journey

Helping African job seekers prepare for interviews

Supporting African news organisations who are advancing media literacy

Preserving one of Nigeria's last sacred groves

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