eBusiness Weekly
Sibongile Khumalo
Google is launching a cloud service specifically for the African continent and the infrastructure will be hosted in South Africa, the company announced on Wednesday.
The new so-called “Cloud region” will help users, developers, businesses and educational institutions across Africa to move more information and tools online. The users will be given the option to store their data in the country of their choice. This will allow companies to comply with local laws prohibiting the storage of data outside of the country, says Bloomberg.
In South Africa, Google already works with online retailer, Takealot, which has built its e-commerce platform on Google Cloud.
Google faces competition from cloud service providers like Microsoft and Amazon Web Services (AWS) in the local market. AWS has been expanding its presence with new offices in Johannesburg and Cape Town.
“Along with the cloud region, we are expanding our network through the Equiano subsea cable and building dedicated cloud sites in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Lagos and Nairobi. In doing so, we are building full-scale cloud capability for Africa,” said Niral Patel, director of Google Cloud Africa.
The Equiano cable landed in Cape Town recently and connects Africa with Western Europe. It is expected to improve internet connectivity speeds and ultimately reduce data costs.
Google believes Africa’s digital economy has the potential to grow to $180 billion by 2025 – 5.2 percent of the continent’s GDP.
Google recently launched voice-typing support for nine more African languages in Gboard, the Google keyboard. The languages to be included in the service are isiNdebele, isiXhosa, Kinyarwanda, Northern Sotho, Swati, Sesotho, Tswana, Tshivenda and Xitsonga.
