Amazon Web Services' African Headquarters Must Account for Its Parent Company's Role in Gaza's AI-Powered Genocide

In the world of modern technology, few names are as synonymous with global connectivity and innovation as Amazon. Its cloud computing division, Amazon Web Services (AWS), represents the very backbone of the digital age – a force that promises to drive progress and economic growth. Here in Cape Town, we see this promise materialise with the establishment of the AWS Sub-Saharan Africa headquarters. Yet, while its shiny facade promises investment and future opportunity, it obscures a bloody reality.  The technology offering to fuel Africa’s digital revolution is powering the world’s first full-scale, AI-assisted genocide in Gaza.

This is a legal and moral conclusion drawn from meticulous documentation in a groundbreaking United Nations report by Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, titled “From Occupation Economy to Genocide Economy.” The report positions Amazon not as a passive bystander but as a primary corporate enabler. It details how Amazon, alongside Google, was awarded a $1.2 billion contract dubbed “Project Nimbus” in 2021 to provide the core cloud computing and artificial intelligence infrastructure for the Israeli government and its military. This contract, largely funded through the Israeli Ministry of Defence budget, is the digital engine of oppression.

This engine is not abstract. It is the specific technology behind the automated killing machines that have defined the assault on Gaza. As Greer Blizzard of Mothers4Gaza (M4G) powerfully articulated at a protest outside Amazon’s Observatory headquarters on Friday, 19 September, “Amazon Web Services servers are not neutral warehouses; they are the engine that makes mass, automated warfare possible. Project Nimbus supplies the raw computing power behind Israel’s AI systems - like Lavender and Where’s Daddy? In the case of Where’s Daddy, systems are used to track targeted Palestinians to their homes, and then bomb the entire house, killing whole families.”

This is the horrifying precision of Amazon’s complicity. Your technology is not merely storing data; it is facilitating the eradication of bloodlines. The Albanese report highlights how AWS provides “endless storage” for Israeli Military Intelligence to collect and analyse vast troves of data on Palestinians, which is then used to confirm assassination strikes. This transforms Amazon from a tech firm into a vital defence contractor for a regime now confirmed by a separate UN Independent Commission of Inquiry to be committing genocide.

The most damning evidence of Amazon’s conscious complicity lies in the very design of the Project Nimbus contract. As Blizzard noted, “The contract for Project Nimbus was deliberately written to block Amazon and Google from ending the contract on ethical grounds, on grounds based on civil pressure and boycotting campaigns. This shows the companies knowingly prioritised profit over human rights.” They saw the potential for this exact outrage and built a legal firewall against their own conscience, choosing binding profit over non-binding ethics.

This deliberate choice makes Amazon’s public-facing commitment to human rights a grotesque parody. On its website, Amazon claims: “We respect human rights and work to ensure our business is not connected to abuses.” Greer Blizzard identifies this perfectly for what it is: "This is 'human rights washing.' Its Project Nimbus contract directly enables military operations in Gaza - making those words a cynical PR shield." It is a corporate strategy, a hollow mantra repeated to placate shareholders and consumers while the machinery of death operates seamlessly in the background.

This hypocrisy was on full display last Friday morning. A coalition of South African civil society groups, including the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Mothers4Gaza, and faith-based organisations, gathered at the sleek AWS offices in Riverlands, Observatory. We came to hand over the UN report and a formal letter calling on Mr Robert Koen and AWS Sub-Saharan Africa to escalate the report to Amazon’s Global Board of Directors and the Project Nimbus Leadership, publish an undertaking on its website to respect international human rights laws and sever support with any organisations committing genocide and agree to engagement with local South African stakeholders on the matter. We had advised the company that we would be arriving to hand over these documents to the Managing Director, Mr Robert Koen. Yet, on a regular Friday morning, we found a vacuum of leadership. Mr Koen was, predictably, “unavailable.” More shockingly, not a single member of his legal or public relations team could be summoned to accept the documents. This was not an oversight; it was a deliberate corporate strategy of evasion, a refusal even to acknowledge the moral crisis on its doorstep.

For South Africans, this is intolerable. Our history grants us a unique and painful expertise in recognising the architectures of oppression, whether they are built from concrete, laws or, as in this case, lines of code and server farms. We understand that apartheid, in any form, is a system sustained by infrastructure. Irene Knight of Mothers4Gaza drew a clear line, “Amazon, like other big tech companies, has been providing the Israeli military with cloud computing and artificial intelligence (AI) tools that it used to attack and conduct mass surveillance on Palestinians. These tech companies have played a key role in enabling and supporting Israel's regime of apartheid, oppression and settler colonial violence.”

Furthermore, this complicity is not just moral; it is criminal. Knight warns, “By providing its services and infrastructure to a genocidal state, Amazon is potentially implicated in war crimes and human rights violations, opening itself to prosecution.” While Amazon seeks profit from our growing African market, it is simultaneously making itself a defendant in future cases of crimes against humanity.

The terrible irony is that this genocide is profitable. Knight notes, “Amazon's investment in Israel has increased since 2023, and so have their profits. We remind Amazon that the company is profiting from the deaths of the Palestinian people, prioritising profit over human rights and international law.”

Our call to Mr Koen and his African leadership team is therefore urgent and specific. AWS presence here implies a responsibility to this community’s values. We are not asking you to shut down your operations. We demand that you use your position to become a force for ethical reckoning within your own corporation.

You must immediately and publicly champion a comprehensive, independent, and transparent audit of the Project Nimbus contract to investigate its role in facilitating war crimes. You must advocate to the global board in Seattle for the termination of this contract because it violates Amazon’s own stated human rights principles and international law.

Irene Knight lays out the positive vision: “Technology should be used for good, socially benefitting communities and building a better future for all. As Amazon grows in Africa, we want its leaders to ensure Amazon's technology is a force for peace and not war.”

Amazon wants to be part of Africa’s future. But that future must be built on a foundation of ethics, not on the ashes of Gaza, the graves of innocent Palestinians. We remind Amazon that it cannot host innovation in Cape Town while it hosts genocide in the cloud. The world is watching. History is judging. It is time for Amazon Africa to choose: will it be a complicit enabler, or will it have the courage to help pull its parent company from the dock of international justice and onto the right side of history? The choice is yours.

* Professor Usuf Chikte, Coordinator, Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) Cape Town.

** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media.