Bad news about Amazon Prime in South Africa

It will likely be some time before Amazon Prime becomes available in South Africa. Even when it does, the popular subscription service could be more limited than in other countries like the US.
Amazon launched its South African online marketplace in May 2024, but to many people’s disappointment and contrary to the expectations of several e-commerce experts, it rolled out without its signature Prime service.
The company’s often led its launch strategies in other markets with Prime and its associated benefits at the forefront.
In September 2024, Amazon South Africa managing director Robert Koen told BusinessTech that the company was still ironing out specifics around the local version of the service.
Aside from that brief comment, the company has kept quiet on any details of the local version of the service.
Takealot was well prepared to meet a Prime challenge, launching its own subscription service with free and expedited deliveries on certain products within days of Amazon.co.za’s debut.
However, this plan is focused solely on delivery benefits, while Prime bundles several offerings across Amazon’s e-commerce, streaming, and e-book businesses into a single subscription.
MyBroadband asked two reputed and experienced e-commerce executives about their expectations for the popular subscription service in South Africa.
Bob Group co-founder and managing director Andy Higgins believes it will take longer than many expect for Amazon Prime to launch locally.
“Even then, it may initially be offered in a more limited capacity,” Higgins said.
Higgins sees potential for Prime to appeal to a specific segment of the market but thinks it is unlikely to become as mainstream in South Africa as in the US.
He believes that the cost-conscious nature of South African consumers will make it challenging for Amazon to establish a subscription delivery model as a mass market offering.
“Shoppers here tend to compare prices across multiple platforms to find the best deal,” Higgins said.

Superbalist and Bash co-founder Claude Hanan contends that Amazon was unlikely to see significant uptake in its Prime subscription unless it had a robust ecosystem of products, services, and customer trust.
In the US, a Prime subscription consists of an extensive list of benefits, including:
- Free two-day deliveries on millions of items
- Free one-day deliveries on more than 15 million items with no minimum order value
- Free same-day deliveries in eligible zip codes on more than three million items in qualifying orders meeting minimum thresholds
- Same-day grocery deliveries on Ultrafast
- Amazon Key delivery inside customer’s garage
- Free release date delivery for video games, books, music, movies, and other products
- Free no-rush shopping for deliberately-delayed orders
- Amazon Day for regularly scheduled order deliveries
- Amazon Prime Video subscription
- Amazon Music Unlimited with 100 million songs on-demand and ad
- Amazon Photos with unlimited full-resolution cloud storage for photos and 5GB storage for videos
- Amazon Prime Gaming with free games, a Twitch channel subscription, and other monthly gaming benefits
There are also other shopping, loyalty programme rewards, fuel savings, medical care and prescription benefits.
All of this is priced at $14.99 (R284) per month or $139 (R2,633) per year.
Hanan said that building an ecosystem like that would take time.
“Importantly, their assortment [of products and services] will need to scale materially — this is arguably their biggest challenge right now,” he said.