Google to Help Digitise Mandela and Tutu Archives
Google has announced a $1.25 million dollar grant to the Nelson Mandela Foundation Centre of Memory preserve and digitize thousands of archival private documents, photographs, and audio and video materials about the life and times of Nelson Mandela the icon. Google has also awarded a grant of the same size 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.
The online multimedia archive will include Mr Mandela’s correspondence with family, comrades and friends, prison diaries, and notes he made while leading the negotiations that led to the end of apartheid in South Africa.
Google has recently entred into partnership with Yad Vashem, the Jerusalem-based archive of Holocaust materials, and recently with many world museums through the Art Project.
Google Inc. is also giving additional grant to Charitable Giving Fund of Tides Foundation to help bring many more people online across South Africa and Africa, so that they can benefit from better access to information. These includes;
- Grants to the Tertiary Education and Research Network (TENET) of South Africa($750,000 for continued work to assist South African universities with Internet and information technology services).
- The Nigeria ICT Forum ($500,000 to support efforts in improving access to Internet infrastructure in tertiary education institutions in Nigeria)
- The Network Startup Resource Center (NSRC) at the University of Oregon ($1,250,000 to enable more people in numerous African countries to participate in and contribute to the global Internet).