Tag: South Africa

Many South African institutions of higher learning are suffering from underfunding, which affects their ability to remediate these issues. Students in South Africa face numerous challenges as well. Statistics from StatsSA report a 45.5 percent unemployment rate among young individuals (aged 15–34 years). And limited educational opportunities and economic disadvantages are the primary factors driving elevated rates of unemployment. This post highlights the impact that reliable and efficient education systems can have on reducing the challenges facing higher education in South Africa.

According to a new economic impact study (EIS) from AWS, AWS has invested ZAR 15.6 billion through 2022 to meet customer demand for cloud computing services. Thousands of South African customers have used AWS technologies to transform their businesses and accelerate their innovation, agility, and cost savings since AWS launched the AWS Africa (Cape Town) Region in 2020. According to the EIS, AWS operations will add an estimated ZAR 68 billion more to South Africa’s GDP by 2029. AWS’s investment impacts other parts of the South African economy as well, helping develop the next generation of workforce, digitally transform businesses, and promote sustainability throughout the country.

According to the IFC, small business ownership in South Africa reflects patterns of racial and gender-based inequality in the broader South African society, and as the size of businesses grows, the rates of black and female ownership decline. At AWS, we believe that building diverse teams allows us to innovate better for our customers. To work toward this, in 2019, AWS South Africa launched the AWS Equity Equivalent Investment Program (AWS EEIP), as part of its Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (B-BBEE) program. The AWS EEIP is a Partner development and acceleration program for 100% black owned small IT businesses in South Africa. Applications for the 2021 intake are now open.

T-Digital, a division of Tshwane University Technology Enterprise Holding (TUTEH) in South Africa, built TRes, a digital platform for students living in student housing and for accommodation providers. TRes connects students with available housing and verified and authorized property owners. It addresses student accommodation needs and helps verified and approved property owners fully allocate their residences, while alleviating administrative burden. With help from AWS Professional Services, T-Digital experienced flexibility, agility, and realized cost savings.

In April, Amazon Web Services (AWS) launched the AWS Africa (Cape Town) Region. AWS has a long history in South Africa and numerous public sector organizations in the region are already spearheading technological innovations in the cloud. From healthcare to education, these four public sector organizations are leading innovation in the public sector in the Region.

As part of the Amazon Sustainability Data Initiative, Amazon Web Services (AWS) is supporting Digital Earth Africa (DE Africa). DE Africa is enabling African nations to track changes across the continent in unprecedented detail by making Earth observation (EO) data more easily accessible. This will provide valuable insights for better decision-making around prevention and planning in areas including flooding, droughts, soil and coastal erosion, agriculture, forest-cover, land use and land cover change, water availability and quality, and changes to human settlements.

To address technology skill gaps and equip the workforce of the future, Amazon Web Services (AWS) established the eKasi initiative. eKasi helps youths, small businesses and students in South Africa build their technology skills and develop business solutions for the world of tomorrow.

Professor Simon Travers and his team of researchers based at the South African National Bioinformatics Institute (SANBI) at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) have launched the Exatype platform, which runs on AWS. The Exatype platform provides rapid, accurate HIV drug resistance analysis at affordable rates. Users upload HIV sequence data files directly from […]