US-based multinational cloud computing giant Amazon Web Services (AWS) has reaffirmed its commitment to SA, noting it will continue investing in infrastructure, skills development and job creation in the country.
During the AWS Summit 2024, held yesterday in Johannesburg, Chris Erasmus, country general manager for AWS South Africa, stated in his keynote presentation that the African continent is a strategic area of growth for the Amazon subsidiary.
AWS is marking 20 years of existence on the continent this year, and in light of this, the company plans to be intentional about its contribution to economic upliftment, he said.
In April 2020, AWS opened its infrastructure region in SA, launching during a time when the country saw increased activity in the data centre space. AWS faced competition from US-based software giant Microsoft, which had opened two local data centre regions in 2019.
According to Erasmus, AWS estimates that between 2018 and 2029, it will have pumped a total of R46 billion into its South African business, which includes the R30.4 billion investment announced last year to construct, operate and maintain its cloud infrastructure in SA.
From 2018 through 2022, the company invested R15.6 billion in SA, which included all cash expenses directly attributable to the AWS Africa region, such as imports of proprietary equipment and software, and in-country spending.
“Cape Town was the spiritual home of AWS, where we started to develop some of the services that we all know and love, and we still do that today. That has essentially been the foundation for us to continue to invest in the continent for the last 20 years.
“Since we announced the AWS region in 2018, we’ve invested R15.6 billion into infrastructure to meet the scaling demand for our products from customers. The Cape Town region now has three availability zones and over 160 services, and we continue to build and grow,” noted Erasmus.
Today, AWS operates 108 availability zones within 34 geographic regions.
Since inception, the AWS data centre has enabled hundreds of developers, start-ups and enterprises, as well as government and the education sectors, to run their applications and serve end-users in Africa.
AWS’s investment, he noted, impacts other parts of the South African economy as well, helping develop the next generation of the workforce, digitally transform businesses and promote sustainability throughout the country.
In Sub-Saharan Africa, the company has grown to reach tens of thousands of customers, with 6 400 partners, and it will continue to expand its services portfolio, said Erasmus.
The jobs supported by AWS’s investment span sectors such as telecommunications, non-residential construction, electricity generation, facilities maintenance and data centre operations.
The cloud computing giant has deep roots in Cape Town, and South African AWS engineer Chris Pinkham was, in part, responsible for building the AWS service EC2 in the city in 2004.
AWS has offices in Cape Town and Johannesburg. The company is building its R4.5 billion African headquarters in River Club Development, based in Observatory, Cape Town, being constructed by Liesbeek Leisure Property Trust.
AWS’s investment includes multiple skills development programmes to develop next-generation technology workers. This includes the global AWS Activate initiative, which offers start-ups free training resources, business support and promotional credits for AWS services.
More than 2 600 companies in SA received access to over R340 million in AWS promotional credits between 2018 and 2022.
In August, AWS opened a Western Cape-based Skills Centre, focused on up-skilling participants − young and old − to combat unemployment and the digital skills gap in SA.
The centre is the third that AWS has built, and the first outside of the US. In June, it introduced two AWS certifications focused on artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and generative AI, to upskill Africans and help them pursue in-demand cloud jobs.
AWS says it has provided cloud skills to more than 100 000 South Africans since 2017.
SA’s joblessness has escalated at alarming rates in recent years, and the youth remain vulnerable in the labour market. The official unemployment rate was 32.9%, as at the first quarter of 2024, according to Statistics South Africa, with unemployed youth (15-34 years) at 46.5%.
“We recognise that one of the biggest barriers to tech adoption is skills, and in 2020 we announced that we will invest billions of dollars in training for 29 million people in free digital skills by 2025. We have surpassed that goal a year early, having trained 31 million people,” said Erasmus.
“In Sub-Saharan Africa, we’ve trained over 300 000 people already. We’ve had over 20 000 people walk into our Cape Town skills development centre, who have gained access to free skills and certification, and some are now starting to enter the job market.”
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