The internet has turned 30, and it is facing an uncertain future in Africa, and the rest of the world. In January 2021, Uganda placed restrictions on citizen use of the internet during the elections. It was a move cited as necessary for security but has far-reaching consequences, creating more concerns than it potentially resolved.
The country is not alone, during the first week of March 2021 more shutdowns were seen taking place in countries such as Niger, Chad, and Senegal. Tanzania placed social media and internet restrictions during its October 2020 elections, Ethiopia shut down the internet for a month in June of the same year, and Zimbabwe, Chad, Guinea, and Burundi also introduced restrictions during the year. In 2019 the internet met with partial or total shutdowns 25 times in Africa, in 2018 that number was 20. It was only 12 in 2017. Globally, there were 213 shutdowns across 33 countries in 2019. According to Francis Hook, Regional Consulting and Research Manager at ID
Quartz/Mike Hutchings
AWS’s story is incomplete without acknowledging the legendary role of an independent team of engineers and developers in Cape Town.
February 7, 2021
Amazon’s next chief executive made his name by launching one of the retail behemoth’s most profitable businesses from South Africa. Andy Jassy, who joined Amazon in 1997 as a technical assistant to Jeff Bezos, started Amazon Web Services (AWS), of which he later became CEO. The web service business ushered in the era of cloud computing and now accounts for more than half of Amazon’s operating profit.
AWS’s story is incomplete without acknowledging the legendary role of an independent team of engineers and developers in Cape Town. This South African team was assembled and led by Chris Pinkham, a South African who had proposed a novel web infrastructure service for Amazon as the engineer in charge of its global infrastructure. Pinkham had gone on to found Amazon’s software development center in Cape