Microsoft on March 6th announced the opening of its first African Data centers on the African Continent for general availability.

This means developers can now deploy their solutions to the African data centers cutting down on latency

This is an addition to some of the big investments Microsoft has made on the African continent. Sometime last year they launched a Software Testing center in Kenya, a Customer care center in Nigeria and now working on a Development center in Kenya and Nigeria.

On a Press Release earlier Tom Keane the Corporate Vice President, Azure Global, Microsoft Azure said

The launch of these regions marks a major milestone for Microsoft as we open our first enterprise-grade datacenters in Africa, becoming the first global provider to deliver cloud services from datacenters on the continent. The new regions provide the latest example of our ongoing investment to help enable digital transformation and advance technologies such as AI, cloud, and edge computing across Africa.

By delivering the comprehensive Microsoft Cloud — comprising Azure, Office 365, and Dynamics 365 — from datacenters in a given geography, we offer scalable, available, and resilient cloud services to companies and organizations while meeting data residency, security, and compliance needs. We have deep expertise in protecting data and empowering customers around the globe to meet extensive security and privacy requirements, including offering the broadest set of compliance certifications and attestations in the industry.

Microsoft has long been working to support organizations, local start ups, and NGOs in Africa that have the potential to solve some of the biggest problems facing humanity, such as the scarcity of water and food as well as economic and environmental sustainability.

Follow these links to learn more about the new cloud services in South Africa and the availability of Azure regions and services across the globe.