American multinational technology company, Google on Wednesday announced the introduction of a dedicated travel mode in Google Maps to provide directions and navigation for motorcycles in Nigeria.

This will also be available in Benin Republic, Ghana, Rwanda, Togo and Uganda from Wednesday, the company said at the third Google for Nigeria event, held in Lagos.

The new feature is part of the new products and features introduced by the tech giant to make Google more helpful to people in Nigeria and across Africa.

The announcements include navigation instructions in a Nigerian voice for both motorcycle and car driving modes, new Street View imagery, Gallery Go, Google Go updates, Google Lens and Bolo, and a Nigerian culinary experience from Google Arts and Culture.

Google says it has also partnered with the Nigerian government to make an online safety curriculum available to all primary and secondary school students in the country, reaching an estimated 56 million Nigerian students every year.

The company also launched navigation instructions in a Nigerian voice for both motorcycle and car driving modes. In the next few months, Google will introduce a new directions experience for Lagos that is optimised for informal transit, bringing Danfo routes into Google Maps, it said.

To help make it easier to visually explore places in Nigeria, Google is publishing more panoramic imagery on Street View. Starting with imagery of Lagos two years ago, it has added Street View imagery of Abuja, Benin City, Enugu and Ibadan – with almost 12 thousand kilometres of roads added.

The company noted that with the growth of Android, more and more Nigerians have phones that take pictures. But not everyone has access to reliable, high-speed internet or cloud backup to quickly find a photo, it said.

That is why Google has launched Gallery Go – a fast and smart photo gallery designed for users who don’t have a reliable internet connection, which brings many of the best features of Google Photos on a device, to help them find, edit and manage their photos even when they are offline.

Google added that from next week, users will also be able to access the Assistant directly from Google Go in a new Nigerian voice. Using only their voice, they will be able to ask Google to call their mum, play the latest Burna Boy video, or find the best Jollof in town, the company said.

Other products and features launched by the company include Google Lens, which helps people to find out more about the world around them through their camera and photos; and Bolo, a speech-based reading app that helps kids learn how to read in English.

Google Arts & Culture has also cooked up a project, ‘Come Chop Bellefull: A Taste of Nigeria’, which pays tribute to Nigeria’s vibrant and diverse food culture. People across the world can now explore Nigerian regional cooking and culture through 2,000 high-resolution images and 30 stories created in collaboration with The Centenary Project at the Pan-Atlantic University, it said.

In 2017 Google committed to train 10 million people in Africa on digital skills over 5 years. To date, the company said 4 million Africans have been trained. The company said it has also trained 15,000 developers and awarded 33,000 scholarships to help African developers become certified on Android, Web, and Cloud technologies.

Building on this, Google said it is committing an additional $4 million to support youth empowerment, gender equality and agriculture, alongside piloting new initiatives to power the social impact ecosystem and promote research on what the future of work looks like for African youth.

In his remarks, Google Nigeria country director, Juliet Chiazor, noted that the company hopes that the products and updates will make Google more helpful for fueling people’s hustles and getting things done.

“We remain committed to bringing the transformational power of technology to everyone in Nigeria and Africa as a whole,” the official said.