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Google Street View car spotted in Nigeria!

A gen 4 Google Street View car was spotted in Lagos, Nigeria!

Yesterday on Twitter the user Ted (@tosinbells) posted the following tweet:

It looks like Google is driving cars equipped with the newest version of the Trekker camera in Nigeria. This one was spotted in Lagos, the largest city of the country. This is great news as African cities can develop quite fast. Lagos was visited by Google last time in 2017, meaning the existing coverage is already outdated in many parts as new road infrastructure was built since.

Edit: on Instagram user njemanzevince also posted a picture of two Google card with gen 4 trekker cameras on each of them. We now know at least two trekkers are in Nigeria.

Since Nigeria is not being listed by Google in the countries where cars drive, it was unknown that they were driving in this country again to update Street View imagery. This also means it is unknown if more cameras are running around or if Google will update / add more places. In the past Google planned to add many Nigerian cities to Street View but only a few of them were added. Kano, Kaduna and Port Harcourt were planned but never covered and Onitsha only was covered through the main highway. Maybe those cities will finally come on Street View? However updating Lagos is probably the goal here as it is the major economic center of Nigeria.

This also means Nigeria will get its first gen 4 coverage. Africa is currently the only continent (along with Antarctica) to not have gen 4 imagery at all and currently only South Africa is planned to get new coverage. If the pictures taken in Nigeria are published we may end with two African countries that have gen 4 pictures! To be continued…