South Africa's cloud market to triple by 2028

Africa Analysis predicts the local cloud market will grow to over R113 billion in four years.

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The value of South Africa’s cloud market is expected to surge to over R113 billion by 2028, up from R35 billion last year. That’s according to Africa Analysis’ 2024 South Africa Cloud Computing Market Growth Forecast Report.

The report highlights four key drivers of this growth: substantial investments from global cloud providers, a strong push from governments and businesses towards cloud-first strategies, data sovereignty regulations, and increased investment in datacentres.

According to Africa Analysis, the country’s internet economy is set to account for between 7% to 9% of GDP next year, due to increased digital transformation, including the rise of 5G, AI and big data, which will further boost demand for cloud computing capacity.

“As more companies adopt hybrid multi-cloud strategies, the criteria for selecting cloud vendors are expected to evolve,” the report says.

Globally, the top hyperscale cloud players have had an established ranking for some time. International analyst firm Synergy Research Group reports that, at end of Q2 2024, Amazon Web Services (AWS) leads the cloud infrastructure market with 32% market share, followed by Microsoft at 23% and Google at 12%, with other players holding less than 5% each.

However, the top player ranking is somewhat different in South Africa. According to Africa Analysis' 2023 cloud survey, some findings of which were incorporated into the recent research, the top three competing companies currently operating in South Africa are Google Cloud Platform, followed by Microsoft, and in third place is Huawei Cloud.

Other international players including AWS and Alibaba (through BCX partnership) are also present locally.

In March 2019, Huawei Cloud was the first ‘hyperscale’ cloud provider to open a datacentre region in the country (beating Microsoft’s local opening by a day), and the Chinese vendor thinks this early mover advantage has paid off, claiming that “nearly one in five surveyed users are running substantial workloads’ on its platform," as per the Africa Analysis report.