Amazon to open African headquarters in South Africa

Amazon, a United States multinational technology company, has chosen South Africa as the headquarters for its African market.

This development comes a week after Twitter, US-based microblogging and social networking service announced the opening of its first-ever African office in Ghana.

The announcement has since generated reactions from some Nigerians on Twitter, as they have taken to social media platforms to register different opinions, especially on the choice of Ghana instead of Nigeria

Similarly, the German government said a new German-West African Centre for Global Health and Pandemic Prevention will be located in Ghana.

BusinessTech reports that authorities of Cape Town, South Africa, confirmed that the headquarters will be located at River Club, a mixed-use development project in Cape Town that costs R4 billion (about $280 million).

In April 2020, Amazon, founded by Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest person, launched its first data centres for Amazon Web Services (AWS) in Cape Town. However, its e-commerce services are not yet available anywhere on the African continent.

City officials said 5,239 jobs will be created in the construction phase, alongside up to 19,000 indirect and induced jobs.

The development is envisaged to take place in phases, with construction set to take place over three to five years.

“The city has carefully and thoroughly considered all of the submissions and concerns during the appeal process. We are acutely aware of the need to balance investment and job creation, along with heritage and planning considerations, ” said Dan Plato, major of Cape Town.

“It is clear that this development offers many economic, social and environmental benefits for the area. We are committed to driving investment to revitalize the economy, which is slowly recovering following the impact of Covid-19.”

The development design intends to create a 150,000 square metre mixed-use space, divided into commercial and housing uses across two precincts. The developer intends 31,900 square metres to be used for residential purposes.

The city said the development will include both market-driven and affordable housing opportunities – the latter of which will be physically integrated with the other residential units in the apartment complexes.

Reacting, the Democratic Alliance (DA) said the project has the potential to provide around 19,000 jobs for Capetonians.