Amazon on Wednesday announced the opening of it’s first Amazon Web Services (AWS) data center in Cape Town, South Africa.

It’s also the first AWS data center to ever be operated on the African soil.

“Starting today, software developers, startups, and enterprises of all kinds, as well as government, education, and non-profit organizations can run their applications and serve end-users in Africa with even lower latency and leverage on the advanced AWS technologies to drive innovation,” the company stated in a press release.

The data center has three availability zones with “independent power, cooling, and physical security”. These also are connected via ultra-low-latency networking infrastructure. And just in case you’re wondering, Amazon’s also considered mitigating the impact of load shedding.

“Like all AWS infrastructure regions around the world, the supply availability zones within the Cape Town Region are equipped with back-up power to make sure there is continuous and reliable power availability to take care of operations during electrical failures and load shedding within the country,” the company added.

Amazon’s data centers comes a year after its rival Microsoft opened its data centers in Johannesburg and Cape Town, South Africa.

Source: Memeburn Image: Tony Webster