The Silent Betrayal of South Africa: How Amazon’s Cloud Empire Threatens the Country’s Economic Future
Twenty years ago, Amazon’s cloud arm, AWS, set its sights on the African continent. The company announced its plans to invest heavily in the region, promising to bring prosperity and economic growth to the people of South Africa. Fast forward to today, and it seems that AWS has been keeping a silent majority of South Africans in the dark.
A recent report revealed that AWS has spent a staggering R46 billion on its South African operations since 2018, with plans to pump even more money into the region in the coming years. But what does this really mean for the South African economy? The answer is not as rosy as one would expect.
AWS’s investment is not just about building data centres and hiring local talent. It’s about creating a cloud-based empire that will control the flow of data and information, holding the country’s economy hostage to its whims. The company’s skills development programs, touted as a way to address the country’s chronic unemployment issues, are nothing more than a means to import cheap labour and suppress local wages.
The statistics are damning. According to a recent report, AWS has provided cloud skills to over 100 000 South Africans since 2017, with plans to train many more. But how many of these people are actually working in the tech industry? The answer is woefully low. Instead, many of these individuals are being trained to work on menial tasks, such as data entry and customer service, with no opportunities for career advancement.
And what about the jobs that are being supported by AWS’s investment? A whopping 6 400 partners, but most of these are small-time operators who are mere pawns in the company’s larger game. The real winners are the corporations that are using AWS’s cloud services to exploit the country’s natural resources and perpetuate inequality.
AWS’s expansion in South Africa is a threat to the very fabric of the country’s economy. The company’s stranglehold on the data market, combined with its influence over government and business, will continue to exacerbate existing social and economic issues. The Silent Betrayal of South Africa: How Amazon’s Cloud Empire Threatens the Country’s Economic Future