Amazon Web Services (AWS) has launched its second Wavelength Zone Edge location in Africa in partnership with Orange.

“Today, we are announcing the general availability of AWS Wavelength in partnership with Sonatel, an affiliate of Orange, in Dakar, Senegal,” the company said. “With this first Wavelength Zone in Sub-Saharan Africa, Independent Software Vendors (ISVs), enterprises, and developers can now use AWS infrastructure and services to support applications with data residency, low latency, and resiliency requirements.”

Wavelength embeds AWS compute and storage services at the Edge of communications service providers’ 5G networks. The company says Wavelength minimizes latency and the network hops required to connect from a 5G device to an application hosted on AWS because application traffic can reach servers without leaving the mobile provider's network. Amazon’s compute and storage services are located within the telco providers’ data centers.

This is Amazon’s second Wavelength Zone in Africa, and second on the continent with Orange. The companies announced plans to launch AWS Wavelength Zones in Morocco and Senegal in May 2024. The Morocco zone launched in Casablanca in February.

Sonatel operates a data center in the Rufisque area of Dakar, totaling 750 sqm (8,070 sq ft) of data hall space. The company also operates a teleport in the territory of Gandoul.

As with the Casablanca location, the parent region of the Dakar Wavelength Zone is Amazon’s Paris cloud region.

Wavelength Zones were first announced in partnership with Verizon in December 2019, when a pilot project was launched in Los Angeles. Wavelength Zones are now available in 19 US cities in conjunction with the US telco.

The company has also launched zones in the UK with BT and Vodafone, South Korea with SK Telecom, Germany via Vodafone, Japan through KDDI, and Canada with Bell Canada.

Telefónica has previously announced it was trialing a Wavelength Zone in Madrid, Spain, but it has yet to officially launch; Vodafone has said it will also launch a zone in Spain.