Amazon officially launching in South Africa in 2024 – My Comments – Our local Afrikaans Amazon
Ten Years After Apartheid (1994-2004): The Raw Facts
This is an article I wrote in 2004, exactly 10 years after hideous Black rule descended upon us. In here are lots of statistics and short bullet points showing the nightmare that South Africa had descended to under Black Communist rule.
[In South Africa we have Takealot. This is basically, an Afrikaans owned, White owned type of Amazon. As it is, they are losing money due to our small market, so this won't be good for them. But it will be interesting to see how the competition between Amazon and Takealot works. The Afrikaners will be tough competition. Jan]
Amazon will launch its online marketplace – Amazon.co.za – in South Africa next year.
The company said that independent sellers in South Africa can start registering their businesses on sell.amazon.com/south-africa from today, 17 October.
“We look forward to launching Amazon.co.za in South Africa, providing local sellers, brand owners, and entrepreneurs – small and large – the opportunity to grow their business with Amazon and deliver great value and a convenient shopping experience for customers across South Africa,” said Robert Koen, general manager of the Sub-Saharan Africa region for Amazon.
Amazon said that most of its products are from independent sellers from small- or medium-sized, which provides a vast selection of products, competitive prices, and great convenience for consumers.
The launch of the online marketplace has been rumoured for several years, but the company’s entrance into the country has faced several snags, from a challenging global tech environment to legal challenges at its Cape Town office.
There was some good news about the company’s local marketplace plan in July, with it going on a hiring spree for 30 full-time marketplace-related jobs.
The group’s cloud computing service – Amazon Web Services – has been active in South Africa for several years, with the group investing R46 billion into the Cape Town region between 2018 and 2019.
Amazon initially planned to launch a marketplace in South Africa in February 2023, according to insiders, but this was pushed back amid a restructuring of the global operations earlier in the year.
With the launch of its marketplace, Amazon said it will offer a range of valuable tools, programs and services to empower sellers and foster their business growth, including hundreds of thousands of hours of free educational content to support sellers at every stage of their journey, including articles, videos, webinars and case studies.
“The launch of Amazon.co.za in 2024 will provide independent sellers throughout the country an opportunity to rapidly launch, grow, and scale their businesses while leveraging the innovative capabilities provided by Amazon,” it said.
The group will face stiff competition from local online marketplace, Takealot.com, which has had time to prepare for the launch and has repeatedly welcomed the competition.
Amazon will also find itself beholden to competition requirements and constraints recently imposed by the Competition Commission though its market inquiry, which the commission explicitly stated would apply to any new entrants to the South African online marketplace space, including Amazon.
AfricanCrisis Archive - 110,000 Articles from 2001 to 2012
This is my archive of my oldest articles, writings and news from my original website which ran from 2001 to 2012. In total, I managed to recover 110,000 articles. You can read them, search them and view them at this link. Just click SEARCH on the top right.
