Google has announced that it will be making $40 million (about Ksh 3.35 billion) in grants in the areas of education, technology for social good, and an end to modern day slavery. 11 of the selected grantee organisations are doing valuable work in Africa, and will receive grants worth over $5.8 million.
The grantees in the "Empowerment through technology" category are using social media, open source programming and other technology platforms to connect communities, improve access to information and solve stubborn problems.
Switchboard will get $250k (about Ksh 21 million) to create a free calling network for 1,300 doctors and 44,000 nurses (serving 44 million people) in Tanzania. This will allow medical professionals in the country to better communicate with each other and allow the government to send bulk SMS messages to them and collect data from them

 iLab Liberia gets $250k (about Ksh 21 million) to expand programming to create a web development curriculum for high school students and start intermediate and advanced free and open source software (FOSS) training. Part of the money would also be used to upgrade the lab's VSAT connection and teach technology classes in conjunction with Leymah Gbowee - recent Nobel Peace Prize winner.

Vittana gets $250k (about Ksh 21 million) to develop improved technology for making microfinance student loans in the developing world and measure actual impact on students, which will help improve loan offerings and ensure they are individually effective and commercially viable. Vittana will make 3,000 loans in 2012, with 95%+ repayment, and 2.7x change in earning power for the student after the loan is made.

Inveneo gets $2M (about Ksh 167 million) to establish a team of experts to assess, design and spearhead rural broadband initiatives in multiple settings; build a collaborative alliance of tech companies and organizations that brings together broader capacity to accelerate delivery of rural broadband; deepen the framework required to deploy broadband, which entails developing IT tools and entrepreneur training modules, navigating regulatory environments, negotiating among service providers and establishing turnkey billing and network management solutions to enable rural broadband models to delivered in developing countries.

Engineers without Borders Canada gets $250k (about Ksh 21 million) to accelerate the development of rural infrastructure in Ghana and Malawi by increasing the effectiveness, responsiveness and efficiency of district government planning, project execution and maintenance operations.