Nigeria: Google Asks Citizens to Upload More Local Content-Premuim Times

The Country Manager, Google Nigeria, Juliet Chiazor, on Tuesday urged Nigerian Internet users to upload more local content that would be useful and beneficial to business growth.

Ms. Chiazor made the call in her opening remarks at a three-day training session in Lagos, being held to enlighten people on various ways they could benefit from online technology.

"The three-day event is focused on how to explore ways that the internet and digital technology can help transform businesses by facilitating the uploading of local content.

"We know that for the internet to make a difference to us, it needs to have some local content, something that should be an integral part of our everyday lives.

"When people are looking for local businesses, they should be able to find that on the internet and the facilitation of relevant local content is important," she said.

The company executive said that Google Nigeria's objective in the initiative was to achieve an impressive 6,000 hours of local content that would be relevant to the immediate environment.

"A session has been dedicated to content upload and our intention is to set a record of 6,000 hours of Nigerian content to be uploaded into YouTube in three days."

She described the online usage of Google among Nigerians as impressive.

"There is an increasing trend by Nigerians getting online and the level of creativity we find in the market place is exciting. And some of the progress has become recognised online," she said.

She recalled that in 2012, some two billion people got online and that the trend in Google search by Nigerians was sports, popular musicians, and on a lot more other areas of the people's interests.

The Google official said that for a lot of people going online, their preferences had been for mobile devices, which was a beneficial message for businesses.

"For a lot of people now, their first Internet experience is through the mobile phone, rather than on desktop.

"This means that businesses in that concern have a lot gain," she said.

She also stated that Nigeria had shown increased growth in the use of mobile phones that go online, surpassing the trend in South Africa.

"The growing trend, however, shows a big gap between South Africa and Nigeria on the desktop side.

"But on the mobile side, Nigeria has actually caught up and tending to exceed that of South Africa," the Google Nigeria Country Manager added.