By Zuko Komisa
As part of its R17.7 billion investment plan for the continent, Google announced on Wednesday that it will launch an African cloud service that will enable customers to store their data locally.
According to Patel, Google predicts that by 2030, the South African cloud region would have generated more than $2.1 billion for the national economy and supported the development of more than 40 000 jobs.
Kaya Biz with Gugulethu Mfuphi spoke Nitin Gajria, Managing Director for Google in Sub-Saharan Africa about the tech giant’s plans and what it will mean for the continent.
LISTEN TO THE FULL CONVERSATION HERE:
In order to equip the continent with complete cloud capacity, Google also announced that it is expanding its African subsea cable network and cloud interconnect locations in four cities, including Cape Town, Johannesburg, Lagos, and Nairobi.
According to Niral Patel, the head of Google Cloud Africa, the cloud infrastructure would be hosted in South Africa but will allow consumers the choice of where to store their data.
“We are giving customers and partners choice, they then have the choice where they would like to store data and where they would like to consumer cloud services from,” Patel said.
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