Amazon officially launching in South Africa in 2024

 ·17 Oct 2023

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.


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