Amazon Web Services Expands into Kenya with Amazon CloudFront Edge Location

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AWS is an enterprise of the American e-commerce giant Amazon that offers cloud computing services.

Amazon Web Services Inc. on Friday announced an expansion into East Africa with a new cloud infrastructure location in Kenya.

The Nairobi edge location will be Amazon’s third in Africa in addition to the other two in South African cities Johannesburg and Cape Town.

AWS executives led by Vice President Teresa Carlson made the announcement on Friday when they met President Uhuru Kenyatta. This was a follow up to a discussion the Head of State had with the group during his official visit to Washington last year.

Carlson applauded Kenya for the passage of the Data Protection Bill 2019 paving the way for the organization’s investment that will enable Nairobi to join other global cities as an edge location. Carlson and informed him of Amazon’s plans to set up an “edge location” in Nairobi.

An edge location is where end-users access services located on Amazon Web Services.

President Kenyatta welcomed the establishment of an edge location in the country by AWS and said Kenya has the requisite infrastructure and educated young population that will benefit from the business opportunities and jobs that will be created.

President Kenyatta welcomed the establishment of an edge location in the country by @awscloud and assured that Kenya has the requisite infrastructure & educated young population that will benefit from the business opportunities & jobs that will be created | @mucheru @BaloziYatani pic.twitter.com/L4blCDz0gB

— State House Kenya (@StateHouseKenya) November 8, 2019

“I am delighted to welcome AWS’s investment in Kenya. The launch of Amazon CloudFront will put us at the forefront of accelerated innovation – enabling startups, enterprises, and our government agencies to focus on building the best user experience,” the President said.

He added: “Kenya is an innovator in digital financial services in Africa. Having advanced cloud infrastructure in the country will support our ability to flourish as a nation and reach our potential as one of Africa’s fastest-growing digital economies.”

Some of the benefits of the edge location provided by AWS include giving businesses and web application developers an easy and cost-effective way to distribute data housed in Kenya to thousands of users with low latency and high data transfer speeds.