Banking group Absa and cloud services giant Amazon Web Services have announced an expansion of their commercial relationship that will see AWS become Absa’s “preferred cloud partner”.

According to a statement on Monday, the partnership is aimed at delivering more agile, secure and customer-focused financial services.

“This partnership reflects our ambition to be a digitally powered financial institution that delivers exceptional value to our customers,” said Johnson Idesoh, group chief information and technology officer at Absa, in the statement.

“Moving additional services to AWS will modernise our infrastructure, allow us to innovate faster, strengthen our resilience, enhance security and offer more personalised, intuitive customer experiences.”

Absa’s statement said the partnership between the two entities kicked off in 2015 and Absa has migrated most of its services into the cloud, giving the bank the confidence to call itself a “cloud-native organisation”.

The bank said the two companies will “continue to support” inclusive digital skills development and community investment. These include Absa’s involvement in the Women in Tech programme, which helps to bridge the gender pay gap in the technology sector.

IT spend

The expanded programme will include 150 unemployed women from South Africa, Kenya, Botswana, Uganda and Ghana, who will benefit from free AWS cloud training and an Absa-sponsored exam fee (valued at US$100) to become AWS cloud practitioner certified, said Absa.

Read: The South African bank racing ahead of its peers in IT spending growth

In the year to end-December 2024, Absa’s total IT spend grew by 12.5% to R6.8-billion, up from R6-billion in 2023. Idesoh said the choice to strengthen Absa’s ties with AWS also aligns with its AI transformation goals as the bank continues to incorporate the technology into its operations. – © 2025 NewsCentral Media

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