Amazon Web Services — Bahrain Middle East Region (me-south-1)

Amazon Web Services launched its Middle East (Bahrain) region — me-south-1 — in July 2019, becoming the first major hyperscale cloud provider to offer a full region in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) area. The region consists of three availability zones and serves enterprise, government, and startup customers across the broader Middle East region.

Bahrain was selected for its digital transformation ambitions, government support for foreign tech investment, open economic policies, and its submarine cable connectivity to both Europe and Asia. The region serves customers across Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, and other GCC states with low-latency AI services including SageMaker, Bedrock, and Rekognition.

AWS has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in the Bahrain region. The facility is powered by Bahrain’s national grid, which runs predominantly on natural gas — one of the region’s lower-emission fossil fuel options given the lack of renewable infrastructure at launch. AWS has committed to renewable energy goals for all its global regions. The region faces growing competition from AWS’s newer Dubai/UAE and Saudi Arabia regions, but Bahrain remains a key hub for financial services and government customers in the GCC.