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In a landmark move for Africa’s burgeoning digital economy, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has unveiled plans for its first full data center region in East Africa, set to launch in Nairobi, Kenya, by late 2026. This announcement, made on September 18, 2025, during the AWS Summit Nairobi, builds on the company’s existing footprint and signals a $2.5 billion investment to bolster cloud infrastructure across the continent. The new region, comprising three Availability Zones, aims to slash latency for East African users and support data residency needs under Kenya’s Data Protection Act.
East Africa’s tech scene is exploding—Kenya’s Silicon Savannah alone hosts over 2,000 startups, with digital services contributing 10% to GDP. Yet, reliance on distant regions like Cape Town has hindered performance. “This Nairobi Region will empower local innovators to harness AI, ML, and analytics without borders,” said AWS Vice President for EMEA, Sandhya Ramesh, at the event. It follows the 2024 rollout of AWS Local Zones in Nairobi, which cut data travel times by 50% for edge computing apps like real-time fintech transactions.
The expansion comes amid AWS’s global push: in April 2025, the company revealed next-gen data center innovations, including liquid cooling for AI workloads and high-density racks optimized by generative AI—features that will debut in the East Africa setup. Early adopters, including M-Pesa’s parent Safaricom and healthtech firm mPharma, are already migrating workloads, projecting 30% cost savings and faster AI deployments for telemedicine and e-commerce.
This isn’t isolated; AWS’s Africa strategy now spans Local Zones in Lagos and planned ones in Johannesburg, complementing the 2022-opened Cape Town Region. As 5G blankets the region and AI adoption surges 25% yearly, the Nairobi launch positions East Africa as a cloud gateway for the Global South. For developers and enterprises, it’s more than infrastructure—it’s the spark for a sovereign digital renaissance, with AWS committing to 100% renewable energy by 2025. Africa’s cloud market, valued at $7 billion in 2025, is set to triple by 2030—Nairobi just raised the stakes.
