Google is once again helping to preserve a piece of history, this time the life story of former president Nelson Mandela.

The multi-billion dollar company donated $1.25 million to the Nelson Mandela Foundation Centre of Memory to help digitise (that means put online), various historical information and memorabilia associated with Mr. Mandela.

“The online Mandela archive, which will be made available to the global audience in the future, will be a wealth of information for those wanting to learn about and research the life and legacy of this extraordinary statesman.

The online multimedia archive will include Mr. Mandela's correspondence with family, comrades and friends, prison diaries, and notes he made while leading the negotiations that led to the end of apartheid in South Africa,” Google stated in a blog post.

Archival documents, photographs and audio-visual material on the 92-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner will also be included in the archive. Google also announced that it made a grant of the same size to the Desmond Tutu Peace Centre in Cape Town for the digitisation of Desmond Tutu's archives as well as an interactive learning centre.

Google also announced more grants which will, “help bring many more people online across South Africa and Africa, so that they can benefit from better access to information.” This includes grants to the Tertiary Education and Research Network (TENET) of South Africa to the value of $750 000, a grant to the Nigeria ICT Forum to the value of $500 000 and a $1.25 million grant to the Network Startup Resources Centre (NSRC) at the University of Oregon, to enable more people from African countries to contribute to the growth of the global internet.

“At Google we want to help bring the world's historical heritage online – and the Internet offers new ways to preserve and share this information, in Africa and elsewhere,” Google said.