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After ‘officially’ announcing the pending launch of its South African marketplace in October 2023, Amazon South Africa has now gone live.

Local shoppers can now get free delivery on their first purchase, and in addition to direct delivery, Amazon also has 3,000 pickup points across the country.

According to its pick-up location search tool, it has partnered with Pargo and The Courier Guy (including Pudo).

MyBroadband first reported that Amazon was looking for warehouse space in South Africa in January 2022, with mass lay-offs at Amazon calling into question whether the South African marketplace would go ahead at all. However, sources close to Amazon’s South African operations said the company still planned to launch.

MyBroadband also learned that Amazon is in discussions with courier companies and local fast-moving consumer goods retailers.

Then, in June, Business Insider reported that it had seen leaked documents confirming that the e-commerce and cloud computing giant plans to launch third-party marketplaces in South Africa and Nigeria. Amazon’s Prime membership programme would also reportedly be available in South Africa shortly after launch.

Codenamed “Project Fela”, Amazon had planned to launch in South Africa by February and in Nigeria by April 2023.

However, well-placed sources told MyBroadband sister publication Daily Investor in January that the Nigerian launch had been paused and the South African marketplace delayed.

Amazon will now have to take on Takealot and several other established online shopping sites, so we will see how Jeff’s e-commerce giant handles the local market.

But for now, let’s get browsing.

[source:mybroadband]