Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud. Millions of customers — including the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises and leading government agencies — use AWS to be more agile, lower costs and innovate faster. AWS offers over 200 fully featured services spanning compute, storage, databases, analytics, AI and machine learning, IoT and security, delivered from a global infrastructure spanning 120+ Availability Zones across 38+ Geographic Regions, serving customers in over 190 countries.

Africa is woven into AWS’s history: Amazon opened a development centre in Cape Town back in 2004, where engineers helped build Amazon EC2 — the core of Amazon’s cloud platform. In 2020, AWS launched the AWS Africa (Cape Town) Region, the continent’s first AWS infrastructure Region, giving African developers, startups, enterprises, governments and non-profits in-country infrastructure with lower latency and access to advanced technologies like analytics, AI, databases and IoT. The footprint has grown steadily since: edge locations in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Nairobi; Africa’s first AWS Local Zone in Lagos; offices in Johannesburg (2015) and Lagos; and commitments like the R365 million Equity Equivalent Investment Programme developing black-owned South African ICT businesses into cloud experts. AWS actively backs Africa’s startup ecosystem through AWS Startup Days and credits, mentorship and go-to-market programs across hubs like Lagos, Accra, Nairobi and Johannesburg — helping power many of the continent’s best-known tech companies.