Google's vice president for product management Caesar Sengupta says Nigeria recorded 10 million first-time internet users in 2014.

Sengupta revealed the statistic in Lagos yesterday and said "Nigerians are not left out in the internet revolution ..."

He noted that the increase in the number of internet users in the West African country is in line with global trends. According to Google 3 billion people are believed to be connected to the internet across the world and in 2017, the number is expected to be more than 4 billion.

Sengupta says Nigeria's internet economy is real and is dominated by creative, data-friendly and life-impacting apps which are changing the face of social lives in Africa's largest economy.

"Google is simply helping the world organise information and make it accessible in different languages, even when it comes from different regions. The information we are talking about exists in books, libraries of different universities, minds, and elsewhere. No matter where you are in the world, let knowledge gained from information impact what you do," he said.

Mobile access to the Net

Juliet Ehimuan-Chiazor, Google's country manager for Nigeria, said 35% of the 19 million phones sold in Nigeria last year were smartphones.

"Nigeria will benefit more from the global internet economy," she said.

Ehimuan-Chiazor added that 65% of searches in Nigeria are made on mobile devices and over the last ten years, the number of internet users in the country increased by more than 800%.

"In Nigeria and Africa in general, we are focused on working with the government, organisations (both large corporations and SMEs) and developers' community to find lasting solutions to challenges faced by institutions," she said.

As an example Ehimuan-Chiazor referred to the deployment of IT across tertiary education institutions with a focus on bringing more local contents online.

"We are not relenting on the efforts to bring local contents online. It is only through the internet that local contents gain global relevance with less stress. Therefore, Nollywood contents are gaining global attention via the internet, especially the YouTube channel.

"We have been uploading Nigerian maps online too. We have mapped about 250,000 meters of roads (maps) and over 200,000 special locations."