Rwanda is the eleventh country to be remapped through Google’s new feature Street View which doesn’t only show street addresses but also gives images of a place. Besides virtual exploration, Street View is also critical to mapping efforts letting people see the most up-to-date information about the world while laying the foundation for a more immersive, intuitive map. The project that has already started in Kenya, South Africa, and Senegal is targeting 100 more countries. Rwanda is the eleventh country to be added on the list. The images through Street View can be accessed by people from different places in the world. It aims at making Google maps more effective and user-friendly by adding nearly 300,000 images enabling people to virtually explore and navigate destinations. According to the Ministry of ICT and Innovation, Google is collecting Street Views across Kigali, the scope includes coverage of the entire city, where permissible, and plans to continue beyond Kigali, plans are still to be confirmed. The Director General of Innovation and Emerging Technologies at the Ministry of ICT, Esther Nkunda, said that, “the imagery that has been collected so far in Kigali is now live on google maps. You can go to Google Maps or Google Earth and use the Street View layer to see the coverage across the city.” She said that with the Street View imagery collected, users from around the world can now virtually travel through Rwanda, adding that this is a great way to promote the country’s tourism and enabling more accurate google maps. According to Google the world is evolving and places are constantly changing. New roads are added, buildings are built, and new businesses are opened all the time. The Google Maps team is to accurately model and reflect this ever-evolving world, and they are often asked how we make a map that does that. In a series of posts over the coming months, Google will give a closer look at how they build the map, diving deep into each of the elements they use to help more than one billion people navigate, explore and get things done. Christella Ntwali, a resident of Gasabo district said that it is important that such initiatives are conducted considering that the entire face of Kigali has changed in the last few months. Ntwali added that sometimes if the updates are not put in place, people end up getting lost while using google maps for directions. He added that the feature is unique, giving the Google Map a virtual reality touch. There are now over 220 billion Street View images from over 100 countries and territories, a new milestone allowing people to fully experience what it’s like to be in these places right from their phone or computer.
