Yesterday, August 7th 2019, GoKada’s CEO Fahim Saleh (@fahims) put up something really funny on his Instagram stories. He had ordered for a GoKada and then following “the map”, the rider had taken him to a totally different location and he jokingly added that he was waiting for an Uber to come get him out of there. LOL!
I’m sure a couple of people can relate to this story of: Just Another Day at the Mercy of Map Navigation Gone Wrong or When My Driver and His Map Decide Not to Work Together [for reasons best known to both].
So, when Google made its announcements on July 24th 2019, at the Google for Nigeria event which includes navigations instructions in a Nigerian voice for both motorcycle and car driving modes, I anticipated some form of relief for drivers of ride and bike hailing services as they make up a major percentage of Nigerian road users who use Google Maps and vitally so. Perhaps, they would understand the Nigerian voice better which would lessen some of the confusion with Maps.
This anticipation would be confirmed in a Reuters interview with an Uber Driver; Maxwell Edet where he explains how helpful the accent is.
Fola Olatunji-David (@folasanwo) of Google Launchpad Accelerator also shared a proud moment (July 27th, 2019; three (3) days after the announcement) where he helped his Uber Driver switch his Google Maps language to Nigerian English and watched how excited his driver was with the development.
The drivers seem to be very happy with the development but the management at Uber and Bolt seem not to have passed on this information to their drivers and I wonder why. At least as at the time of writing this article. It seems like this responsibility has been left in the hands of the passengers/good members of the public.
On Sunday August 3rd, 2019 (Ten (10) days after the announcement), I played the role of a good member of the public when I told my Bolt Driver about the option of switching to a Nigerian voice for navigation instructions after striking up a conversation with him. He was excited at the news and explained that he was just hearing about it for the first time. I then went on to ask – in a bid to clarify – if he hadn’t been sent a memo by the company or something to that effect and he replied he hadn’t.
Clearly not intending to smear any of these companies, this raises a question about effective information and feedback culture at these places. Especially regarding useful/beneficial information to drivers.
I guess it’s in our hands to spread this goodwill message but can this information also be spread Bolt and Uber? Two weeks is a lot of time.
And yeah to change the settings:
- [For Android] On the maps app, go to settings>navigation settings>voice selection>select “English (Nigeria)”
You just may be doing your driver a lot of good.
- [For iOs] This may or may not work as it still responded in English (Great Britain).
However, this is what I tried out. On the maps app, go to settings>voice search>select “English (Nigeria)”
You could also try this if it works: go to your device’s general settings and change the language to English (Nigeria).
It seems though that it doesn’t work on iOs yet.
