After months of planning and discussion, Silicon Cape, an NPO and ecosystem enabler for tech-enabled startups in the Western Cape, has announced a co-operation with Amazon Web Services (AWS), the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform. The aim: to spread tech innovation and knowledge, specifically to startups and tech entrepreneurs.
Silicon Cape Chairperson, Dr Sumarie Roodt, says: “Our co-operation with AWS highlights how carefully selected and structured collaborations can positively impact local economic ecosystems, particularly as it will enable key value exchanges to take place between the Silicon Cape and AWS communities. It should be used as an example to inspire a growing number of similar collective impact collaborations.
“Our relationship with AWS enables startups as well as small, medium, and micro-sized enterprises to think big and accelerate economic growth by allowing them to get started quickly, scale as they need and gain access to the same technology infrastructure that was previously reserved for large enterprises.
“This also confirms that our recently launched Silicon Cape membership model has delivered high impact value for local and global companies wishing to tap into the innovation value chain within the startup space in the Cape, and that Silicon Cape is a Pan-African unifier of innovation efforts across the continent. Additionally, it is further testament that the Silicon Cape ecosystem is being recognised globally as a hotbed of leading innovation efforts, not only in the Cape and South Africa, but on the continent and beyond.”
Wesgro CEO, Tim Harris has welcomed the announcement that Amazon has invested in a key ecosystem coordinator like Silicon Cape, saying: “This investment shows that there is confidence in the tech ecosystem of Cape Town, and in the economy of the Western Cape. And there should be. Cape Town is the Tech Capital of Africa, and one of the major tech hubs of the world. It is the most productive on the continent, employing more people than that of Nairobi and Lagos combined. Our ecosystem is full of talented and skilled people, where innovation is a way of life. I am confident this collaboration will be a success, as we continue to position our destination for more investment in the future.”