Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), is launching its Amazon CloudFront Edge location in Kenya, promising customers a fast and secure Content Delivery Network (CDN) that accelerates the delivery of applications, data, and videos to users worldwide, with high transfer speeds.
Amazon Web Services says the Amazon CloudFront is expected to be operational in early 2020 promising up to 50 percent reduction in latency for delivery of content with the new Edge location.
Kenya is the latest country in Africa after South Africa to be connected to AWS’s global infrastructure network, which is designed and built to deliver the most flexible, reliable, scalable, and secure cloud computing environment with the highest quality network performance available today.
Customers across all industries in Kenya are benefitting from the flexibility, scalability, and security of the AWS cloud. The improved and faster user experience, with local Amazon CloudFront infrastructure, will help in driving the development of even more web applications across Kenya, including eCommerce, education, entertainment, gaming, healthcare, media, mobile banking, and government services.
“We are thrilled to increase our support of customers and partners of all sizes in Kenya with the upcoming launch of the first Amazon CloudFront Edge location in the country,” said Teresa Carlson, AWS Vice President Worldwide Public Sector.
AWS is targeting Kenyan startups, enterprises, government, education, and nonprofit customers as some of its customers. Located in Nairobi, the new Edge location will bring the full suite of benefits provided by Amazon CloudFront, including compute, networking, and security services like AWS Lambda@Edge, Amazon S3 Transfer Acceleration, AWS Shield, and AWS Web Application Firewall (WAF).
Kenya is the latest country to be connected to the AWS global infrastructure network of 200 Points of Presence (including 189 Edge Locations and 11 Regional Edge Caches) in 77 cities across 37 countries.
“I am delighted to welcome AWS’s investment in Kenya. The upcoming launch of Amazon CloudFront puts us at the forefront of accelerated innovation – enabling startups, enterprises, and our government agencies to focus on building the best user experiences,” said President Kenyatta, President of the Republic of Kenya. “Kenya is an innovator in digital financial services in Africa. Having advanced cloud infrastructure in the country will provide a secure backbone for business continuity, support our ability to provide new skills to the next generation of professionals, and reach our potential as one of Africa’s fastest growing digital economies.”
