Amazon Web Services’ original cloud originated in Cape Town, where a local team developed Elastic Compute Cloud, or EC2, the computing engine that became the foundation of Amazon’s global cloud business, its most profitable division, with $42.2bn (R682bn) revenue in the second quarter accounting for more than 20% of group turnover. African banks have now helped create another core AWS service and are influencing how the company adds AI to customer operations, Tanuja Randery, AWS vice-president and MD for Europe, the Middle East & Africa, told Business Times. She said 2004 engineers from Cape Town developed the foundation of a key AWS cloud component used by customers including Standard Bank and Absa Bank. Banks are using Connect, its contact-centre platform, to rethink call-centre economics and drive upsell and cross-sell. Standard Bank, operating in multiple markets, said more than 1,000 engineers use Amazon Bedrock and the Q developer assistant, doubling solution delivery speed. Randery said Africa adopted cloud earlier than several European markets, with executives driving change.