14 DAY TRIAL // Google is announcing a couple of grants for two South African foundations of great importance. Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu both played a crucial role in abolishing apartheid in South Africa and their legacy will now be preserved online thanks to the digitization efforts of Google.
With the grants, worth $1.25 million each, the foundations handling the archives of the two will be able to better preserve the material, writing, audio and video content and so on, as well as make it available online.
"As one of the most influential leaders of our time, and the face of South Africa’s incredible transition to democracy, Nelson Mandela’s name is almost synonymous with efforts to create meaningful dialogue and promote social justice," a Google blog post announcing the grants read.
"It is with huge excitement that today we announce a $1.25 million dollar grant to the Nelson Mandela Foundation Centre of Memory, which will help to preserve and digitize thousands of archival documents, photographs, and audio-visual materials about the life and times of Nelson Mandela," it added.
The efforts to digitize the archive will mean that everyone will be able to learn about Mandela's struggle to abolish apartheid and later, as president, move South Africa forward. The digital archive will include correspondence, Mandela's prison diaries and other notes.
"A grant of the same size has also been made to the Desmond Tutu Peace Centre in Cape Town, for the documentation and digitisation of Desmond Tutu’s archive, as well as an interactive digital learning centre." Google's Daniel Lederman and Julie Taylor wrote.
Google is making several other grants in the region. They focus on widening internet access education, in South Africa through a $750,000 grant to the Tertiary Education and Research Network for IT services, and in Nigeria with a $500,000 grant to the Nigeria ICT Forum.