A Man Spent $5,000 of His Own Money To Put Zimbabwe on Street View (cnet.com)

Zimbabwe is too far for many people to visit, but 37-year-old Tawanda Kanhema grew up there before moving to the United States. Thanks to Kanhema, though, you'll soon be able to play virtual tourist, thanks to his work and the magic of Google Street View. From a report: Kanhema, who left the country to study journalism and documentary film-making at the University of California, Berkeley, spent two weeks back in Zimbabwe shooting the sights and sounds of the coolest places. Areas he covered include the capital's Harare's central business districts, malls, a virtual tour of Victoria Falls, Christmas Pass, the city of Mutare's main business strip as well as the Great Zimbabwe monument and the Eastern Highlands. He's uploaded over 500 miles of coverage, including Street View images uploaded during October and November. It's a lot to pack in, especially over a mere two weeks, but Kanhema got it done with a custom off-the-shelf kit of cameras consisting of the Insta360 Pro 2 and a GoPro Fusion. He particularly liked the Pro 2, which is Street View ready -- meaning he could publish footage to the platform right after shooting it.

CNET:So tell me more about you and why you decided to embark on such a project.
Kanhema: I grew up in Zimbabwe and went to school at the University of California, Berkeley where I studied journalism and documentary film-making. I currently work as a product manager in San Francisco, building news applications and internal tools for newsrooms. I have a background in journalism and documentary photography, so visual storytelling has always been close to my heart and I see a lot of opportunities for storytelling on the Street View platform.

Comments

Re:Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

I love looking at impoverished people living in grass huts!

The sad thing is that Zimbabwe was once a net exporter of food. Mugabe and his thugs really fucked it up.

Too far from where?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Zimbabwe is too far for many people to visit

More than 100 million people live in countries next to Zimbabwe.
If you want to say "too far from US for many US citizens to visit", then spell it out.

Re:$5000 Zimbabwe dollars

[Gavagai80]

Actually, Zimbabwe has their own pseudo currency again now. They're notes theoretically exchangeable for US$ but they haven't had enough US$ to exchange for quite a while so the value of the notes has been plummeting.