Google Cloud has officially launched its Johannesburg cloud region in South Africa, marking its first in the country and the continent.
The Google Cloud director for Africa, Niral Patel highlighted that this development would play a crucial role in accelerating Africa’s tech ecosystem. The region is meant to provide organizations with the necessary resources to scale, innovate, and compete globally, offering high-performance, secure, and low-latency cloud services.
The significance of this move is underscored by the projected growth of Africa’s Internet economy, estimated to reach $180 billion by 2025, constituting 5.2% of the total GDP. Google has committed $1 billion to support Africa’s digital transformation, recognizing the key drivers for growth, including infrastructure investment, nurturing tech talent, and fostering a vibrant startup ecosystem.
The addition of the Johannesburg region expands Google’s global network to 40 cloud regions and 121 zones, extending its services to over 200 countries and territories. The region is seamlessly connected to Google’s secure network, incorporating a network of high-capacity fiber optic cables across land and sea, including the Equiano subsea cable system linking Portugal with Togo, Nigeria, Namibia, South Africa, and St. Helena.
A number of notable African companies, such as Deloitte Africa, FNB, Liquid, MTN Group, and Pepkor, have already partnered with or are existing customers of Google Cloud. This launch comes after similar initiatives by other major cloud service providers in recent years, with Huawei being the first to officially launch cloud computing services in South Africa, closely followed by Microsoft and Amazon Web Services (AWS). Oracle and Telkom’s BCX also joined the fray with their respective cloud regions in Johannesburg, emphasizing the growing importance of the African continent in the global digital landscape.
