Amazon continues to lay roots in South Africa as it opens a new AWS office in Johannesburg today.

The new office will serve to support South Africa’s cloud market  while also providing a range of services aimed at accelerating local business’ migration to cloud.

“Johannesburg offers an incredible talent pool of highly skilled and creative people. It is home to many notable South African enterprises leading the way in digital innovation as well as fast-growing startups,” said country manager for AWS, Chris Erasmus.

This is just the latest move from AWS which has been making moves into Africa since as far back as 2004 when it set up a development centre in Cape Town.

More recently, AWS opened its Africa Region in Cape Town at the top end of 2020. This has seen an uptick in the adoption of AWS solutions which has necessitated the need to open an office in Johannesburg.

“The new office will support customers to innovate, lower their IT costs, and grow their organisations by leveraging the cloud. We look forward to fostering the country’s pioneering spirit alongside our customers by helping them accelerate their digital transformation and deliver innovative new products and services to the South African economic landscape,” says Erasmus.

Urgent interdict to be heard on Friday

While a new office in Johannesburg is good news for AWS, Amazon continues to face roadblocks in its construction of its River Club multi-purpose complex.

Amazon’s choice of location has stoked the ire of the Goringhaicona Khoi Khoin Indigenous Traditional Council, The Observatory Civic Association, Southern African Khoi and San Kingdom Council, the First Indigenous Nations of Southern Africa (FINSA) and the Kai Korana Transfrontier Royal House. These organisations and others collectively support the Liesbeek Action Campaign.

On 18th March 2022 an interdict was issued preventing the developers from continuing with construction pending the outcome of a High Court review of authorisation decisions.

The Liesbeek Action Campaign however, alleges that the developers returned to the site on 27th June to resume construction violating the interdict granted in March.

On Friday, a contempt hearing will take place at the High Court regarding this matter.

“We are fighting to protect the fundamental rights of First Nations people, as well as proper legal process and democracy. Our campaign is supported by 20 indigenous Khoi and San entities, multiple civics, multiple environmental NGOs and almost 75 000 people who have signed our petition. We will not allow this ultra wealthy developer to simply decide what is lawful and what is not, nor to avoid answering in court for such delinquency,” Liesbeek Action Campaign said in a press release.

As Mybroadband reported in July, if this project faces further delays, Amazon may be forced to scrap it entirely. Given the statement from activists above, that is starting to look like a real possibility, but let’s see what the court decides on Friday.