Africa team
The Google Research team in Africa is committed to applying AI and ML to deliver sustainable solutions that address societal and business challenges in Africa and the world.
The Google Research team in Africa is committed to applying AI and ML to deliver sustainable solutions that address societal and business challenges in Africa and the world.
About the team
The Africa team is located in both Accra and Nairobi, with a strong team of 20+ members from multiple disciplines, including researchers, engineers, program managers, research residents, and other cross-functional teams. We leverage our team’s comprehensive pool of knowledge and expertise to advance sustainable solutions, helping address some of Africa's most pressing challenges and making AI more helpful for everyone.
Our collaborations, spanning from local startups to international organizations, reflect our commitment to tackle shared challenges through strategic partnerships. This commitment goes beyond innovation, as we continue to partner with academic institutions in Africa to support the next generation of researchers.
Team focus summaries
Applying deep learning to develop new nowcasting models that learn to predict weather patterns directly from observed data and can compute predictions faster than the physics-based techniques.
Outlining buildings derived from high-resolution satellite imagery, covering most of the developing world, for a range of applications (e.g., population estimation, urban planning and humanitarian response, environmental and climate science).
Developing AI tools that contribute to the resilience of Africa's food systems to shocks like climate change, economic and environmental factors, with a focus on food insecurity forecasting and smallholder farmers network optimization
Enhancing the accuracy and capabilities of speech recognition, text-to-speech, and machine translation of African languages by providing open data to institutions working to advance these languages.
Highlighted work
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Open buildingsA collection of building footprints to support social good applications. These are useful for a range of applications, from population estimation, urban planning and humanitarian response, to environmental and climate science. -
African language expansionLeveraging AI to create datasets and tools that support underrepresented languages in Africa. -
AI for climate adaptationWorking with governments, organizations and communities to help address climate challenges. -
6 ways Google is working with AI in AfricaResearch in Africa for Africa and the World: Using AI to help solve pressing problems affecting millions of people both locally and globally. -
Using AI to help African communities and businessesNurturing and partnering with local communities to deliver AI solutions that positively impact society.
