AWS vs Azure vs GCP for Kenyan Businesses

None of the three big clouds runs a region in Kenya. Every Kenyan workload on AWS, Azure or Google Cloud is served from somewhere else, which settles less of the AWS vs Azure vs GCP question than people assume, and settles one part of it more: how you get a private link from Nairobi into the cloud.

This is how we compare them when a business in Kenya or elsewhere in East Africa asks which to build on. CloudSpinx designs, migrates and runs workloads on all three through our cloud consulting practice, so we earn the same whichever one you pick.

The short answer

• AWS: our default. The widest service catalog, a Direct Connect location in Nairobi, and the lowest round trip we have measured from Nairobi (to its UAE region, not Cape Town).
• Azure: the right call when the business already lives in Microsoft 365, Entra ID and Windows Server, because identity and licensing carry over.
• GCP: strongest when the workload is analytics on BigQuery or the team is Kubernetes-native on GKE.

Where the nearest regions are

AWS has one African region, Africa (Cape Town). It lists a Nairobi Local Zone as announced, not live, and a Local Zone would be an extension of Cape Town rather than a region of its own. CloudFront has edge locations in Nairobi.

Azure has South Africa North (Johannesburg) and South Africa West (Cape Town), and Microsoft restricts the second to specific scenarios such as disaster recovery. Microsoft and G42 announced an East Africa cloud region at a geothermal-powered site in Olkaria, and the project has since missed its target without breaking ground. It is not on Azure's regions list. Plan on Johannesburg.

GCP has a Johannesburg region (africa-south1) plus a Cloud CDN cache and network edge location in Mombasa.

The map misleads here. We measured TCP connect time, which is roughly one round trip, from a consumer connection in Nairobi: AWS's UAE region answered in a median 75 ms, Azure South Africa North in 81 ms, AWS Cape Town in 85 ms and AWS Frankfurt in 191 ms. The UAE beats Cape Town because packets follow the subsea cables, not the coastline. We have no honest Google figure, because Google's regional API endpoints answered in 17 to 19 ms, which is Google's own edge in Kenya answering, not Johannesburg, and any latency table that shows a hyperscaler region in the teens from Nairobi has measured the same front door. For a business application, 75 to 85 ms is unremarkable. If a regulator or a contract cares where the data sits, that question outranks latency, and CBK outsourcing approval is the place to start.

The private link is where they split

This is the difference that survives a closer look.

AWS opened a Direct Connect location in Nairobi selling dedicated 10 and 100 Gbps ports, with hosted connections from 50 Mbps through a partner. Google lists a Cloud Interconnect facility in Nairobi at 10 and 100 Gbps. Azure's nearest ExpressRoute locations are Johannesburg and Cape Town, so a private circuit from a Nairobi rack to Azure has to be carried to South Africa first.

Most businesses never need any of it, and a site-to-site VPN over two internet links does the job. When you do need one, we priced the AWS side line by line in connecting a Kenyan data center to AWS.

Pricing: price your own bill

We do not publish a monthly figure for "a typical small business setup", because no such setup exists and the number would mislead you more than help. All three publish their prices in US dollars, and at entry level the compute line rarely decides anything. Data going out does. AWS charges USD 0.154 per GB for internet egress from Cape Town once the first 100 GB a month (counted across all regions) is used up, and a file-heavy or video-heavy app can make that line bigger than the servers.

Put your own inventory, egress included, into the AWS Pricing Calculator, the Azure pricing calculator and the Google Cloud Pricing Calculator. Twenty minutes in each beats any comparison table.

Support is a plan you buy

A one-hour response to a production outage is a paid plan on all three. AWS puts it in Business Support+, Azure in its paid tiers (the plan included for all customers covers billing and self-help), and Google in Enhanced Support, which starts at USD 100 a month or 10% of the bill, whichever is higher. None of them will log into your account and fix it. That part is on you, or on whoever runs the platform for you; ours is a 1-hour P1 response, 24/7.

Which one we default to

AWS, for most businesses in Kenya starting out. The reasons are the ones above: a private path in Nairobi if you ever need it, the shortest measured round trip, and the widest catalog, so the service you need next year is probably already there.

Azure wins outright when the company already runs on Microsoft 365 and Active Directory, or carries Windows Server and SQL Server licenses it can bring along. Google earns it when the core of the business is data and BigQuery is the reason you are moving. And if you already have a working account on one of them, we will usually tell you to stay, because a move between clouds costs real money and rarely buys anything.

Not sure which fits? Our cloud consulting team starts with a free readiness assessment: we inventory what you run, price it on the platform that suits it, and tell you if the honest answer is to stay put. Talk to us.