Google Africa recently launched the Google Apps Supporting Programs (GASP), which is also available in South Africa. As part of Google’s efforts to bring African users online by reducing Internet access barriers, the initiative aims to improve accessibility to the Internet for thousands of university staff and students.

The initiative is designed to catalyse Internet usage and Google Apps adoption in Sub-Saharan universities through the provisioning of Google Apps for Education – as well as strengthening existing ICT services in participating universities by offering a combination of Internet bandwidth or infrastructure grants, technical consulting and training, and Google Apps training.

Professor Antonie de Klerk, the Executive Director at the University of Pretoria, said the launch of the new e-mail solution will improve the lives of the students in terms of productivity and efficiency in their studies.

Ego Obi, Google Program Manager for Sub-Saharan Africa said, “We are delighted to be launching this initiative in South Africa in collaboration with universities around the country. We want to get more and more African users online by improving access to the Internet and helping universities to take advantage of the Internet’s many opportunities.”

Dr Jakkie Pretorius, Director IT Services for the University of Pretoria stated, “The project team has successfully engaged with Google in making the leap towards cloud computing services. IT Services at the University of Pretoria is pleased to offer its students access to the Gmail hosted e-mail service, and supports the journey towards enabling other Google services for the UP student community. The successful completion of the project allows the University to reduce lT costs, deliver lifelong e-mail addresses to students, and provide a robust channel for bulk e-communication. We look forward to a long and mutually beneficial relationship with Google”.

Questions and answers regarding GoogleUP: Tuks students are going Google

From left to right: Dr Jakkie Pretorius - Director for IT Services at the University of Pretoria; Ego Obi - Google Program Manager for Sub-Saharan Africa; Professor Antonie de Klerk, the Executive Director at the University of Pretoria.

From left to right: Carl Baumeister - UPs Google Ambassador; J.W Wessels - UPs Google Ambassador; Dr Wimpie Beeken - UPs Project Co-ordinator for Google UP; Ego Obi - Google Program Manager for Sub-Saharan Africa; Wonga Mbasa - UPs Google Ambassador.