Leading search engine company Google is rolling out a free one-year subscription to its Gemini AI Pro plan for African youths. This represents the company’s latest move to make artificial intelligence accessible to the continent’s young people and leverage it for research and innovation.

A statement on Thursday by Google’s SVP, Research, Labs, Technology & Society, James Mayinka, explained that the rapidly expanding wave of AI is an urgent call to bolster youths’ skills and benefit from tech potentials. For Google, the AI tool will enable students to get in-depth information across the globe. 

“Enabling Africa’s young people to learn, innovate and lead is critical to Africa’s development and economic growth. That’s why we’re getting advanced AI into the hands of college students (aged 18 or older),” part of the statement reads. 

The plan, according to the company, will start rolling out for students in Nigeria, Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, South Africa, Rwanda and Zimbabwe. Other countries will be added in the coming months.

Africa is home to the world’s largest youth population (slated to double to more than 830 million by 2050), and Google believes these young generations need access to deep research tools to lead Africa’s development and economic growth. 

“By providing students expanded access to Gemini 2.5 Pro for research, problem-solving, coding and content creation, we’re directly empowering them to address challenges and pursue opportunities specific to the continent, thereby contributing to economic growth and societal progress,” James said. 

In furtherance of its recognition of the potential of African youths, Google is also bolstering local capacity by providing African universities and research institutions with over $17 million in funding. This project will seek to train students and teachers on how to leverage advanced AI skills in research and innovation.

Towards the course of this initiative, the company said it will inject an additional $9 million into the project in the coming year. 

“To date, we’ve trained 7 million Africans and plan to train an additional 3 million students, young people, and teachers by 2030,” he said. 

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James added that the search engine giant will also enhance its recognition of African indigenous languages in its AI models and alleviate language as a barrier to knowledge. With this, the company is planning to add more than 40 African languages to Google Translate, a move that will bring the total number of African dialects on the model to 70+.  

Google is strengthening Africa’s connectivity

As part of its commitment to Africa’s digital future, Google has announced four strategic subsea cable connectivity hubs across the coast of Africa. According to the company, the infrastructure promotes Africa’s usage of AI and connects it digitally with other continents.

“This investment creates new digital corridors within Africa and between Africa and the rest of the world — ultimately deepening international connectivity and resilience, as well as spurring economic growth and opportunity,” James said. 

In recent years, the company has invested heavily in Africa’s connectivity infrastructure. The $1 billion funding of Seacom cable, Google Cloud region in Johannesburg, SA, and the Equiano subsea cable, which connects Africa with Australia are examples.

Google noted that its investments enabled 100 million Africans to access the internet for the first time. Through the digital economy and infrastructure, the Equiano cable alone is expected to increase the 2025 real GDP in Nigeria, South Africa and Namibia by an estimated $11.1 billion, $5.8 billion and $290 million, respectively.

Through these cutting-edge innovations, Google aims to reach 500 million Africans with its AI-powered models that help tackle societal challenges by 2030.

“We’ve seen the power of enabling research and innovation in Africa with the pioneering work of our AI research teams in Kenya and Ghana. Together with local partners, these Google teams are leading cutting-edge research to benefit Africa and the world,” part of the statement reads. 

A recap of the new investments by Google

Catch the highlights of Google’s announcement 

• A free one-year subscription to its Gemini AI Pro plan for African youths.
• $17 million in funding for research and innovations for African universities. An additional $9 million in the coming years.
• An addition of 40+ African languages to Google Translate. To reach 70+.
• To train 3 million African students and teachers on AI, research and innovation by 2030.
• Four subsea cables across Africa for digital connectivity.

These investments are Google’s attempt to place Africa at the core of leveraging AI innovations for personal development and economic advancements.