Areas such as the U.S. and Europe are largely mapped on Google Street View while vast regions of Africa, Antarctica, and Central Asia are not.
Tawanda Kanhema moved to the U.S. from Zimbabwe in 2009. He was greatly disappointed that he was unable to check out his home city Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital city, on the platform. The busy streets and shops, the schools he attended - none of it was there.
Tawanda, who is a freelance photographer, set out to change that. In 2018, applied to borrow a 360-degree camera through Google's Street View camera loan programme. After he was approved, he took a two-week-long trip to his country.
With the borrowed 360-degree Google camera and around $5,000 of his own money he mapped 2,000 miles of Zimbabwe. Since then, he has filled in Google Street View with other areas in Africa and Canada as well.