On 20 November 2018, Huawei Cloud announced a new South Africa region, a move the company said made it the first cloud service provider with a local data center delivering cloud services in Africa.
The South Africa region was scheduled to begin offering services by the end of that year. Huawei said businesses in South Africa and neighboring countries would be able to use lower-latency and secure cloud products, including Elastic Cloud Server (ECS), Elastic Volume Service (EVS), and Object Storage Service (OBS).
South African officials welcomed the launch as part of broader efforts to build local digital capacity. Robert Nkuna, Director-General at the National Department of Telecommunications and Postal Services in South Africa, said Huawei had been a strong technology partner and that the government wanted to work with the company on cloud skills transfer.
“Huawei has been a great technology partner to our country and they have regularly brought cutting edge technologies to our shores. The launch of the Huawei Cloud Service is taking place in an exciting period in our country. For an example we are investing in skills development with numerous partners. We’ll engage Huawei to transfer cloud technology skills to SA and the continent. We are convinced that we can fast track our development if we work in partnership with other stakeholders.”
Huawei framed South Africa as a strategic market and said cloud computing would help unlock growth across sectors such as finance, energy, and agriculture. The company also said its cloud and artificial intelligence tools could support governments, carriers, and enterprises as they move toward more connected digital systems.
Alongside the regional launch, Huawei introduced the Africa Partnership Program with local channel partners including Altron, ATOS, BCX, Datacentrix, EOH, Gijima, StorTech, TCM, Tech Mahindra, T-systems, and XON. It also launched InTouch Aggregator, a PaaS platform built on HUAWEI CLOUD to connect carriers, expose telecom capabilities, support OTT services, and expand the cloud ecosystem.
Huawei said it had more than 30 years of ICT infrastructure experience and that its cloud footprint, together with partners, covered Southeast Asia, Europe, Latin America, Russia, Africa, and China. The company said it operated 22 regions and 37 availability zones, and cited customers such as Groupe PSA, Santander Bank, CERN, Falabella, and Andreani as users of its cloud services.
