That's a lie. Kenya, Nigeria, Morocco, Egypt are just as adept to cloud as South Africa is.
EDIT:Screw the 'groupthink' on HN. Why would you downvote a simple non-offensive comment like this? Africa and its technology are my specific area for research. I know what I am talking about.
I think people are responding to your first sentence, "That's a lie." Which is a rather aggressive lead, particularly when I don't think your parent was trying to pull the wool over anyone's eyes. Maybe edit it to say "I can understand you position, however, Kenya...."
I don't think Oblio was talking shit about Africa's tech scene just specifically that none of the big Cloud companies have any data centers outside of SA.
Though yes, if Oblio was talking shit about Africa they could use a bit of Three Stooges-esque slapping about.
I wasn't "talking shit about Africa", I have no hidden agenda about this topic (or any other kind of agenda).
My phrasing was a bit awkward but my point was exactly what you said.
Every time there's a discussion about major cloud providers (Amazon, Google, etc.) in Africa someone says: "oh, there are DCs in Africa". Then you look them up and they're all in South Africa and the rest of Africa is blank.
Im sorry but Kenya isn't as far ahead with the Cloud as South Africa is. The market has far more depth in South Africa. There are power problems around Mombasa (where the Seacom cable gets in), cost is just miles out on the electricity end too.
There's a reason AfriNIC is better suited to being in Kenya, but is in Mauritius. Even on raw metric terms you wouldn't find Kenya higher on a single metric in terms of cost, or bandwidth. The only one would be latency to Europe and that too due to physical constraints - and even so just on backbone lines.
My Nigerian friends will read his statement and say, "He's right."
From what they tell me, some parts of Nigeria have never had electricity, especially in the oil-rich Niger Delta. Hard to believe, but that's the way it is.
The thing is though, North African countries like Morocco and Egypt are much closer to existing EU data centres than Johannesburg is. Even Nigeria seems to be about half as far as Joburg.
It seems to me that staking out the unclaimed position at the furthest southern economic hub makes sense as a first step, whether that hub has the most customers or not.
EDIT:Screw the 'groupthink' on HN. Why would you downvote a simple non-offensive comment like this? Africa and its technology are my specific area for research. I know what I am talking about.