By Naija247news Tech Desk | October 21, 2025- A massive Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage on Monday disrupted some of the world’s biggest online platforms — from financial apps and social media networks to popular gaming services — leaving millions of users unable to access essential services.
The disruption, which originated from AWS’s US-EAST-1 Region, caused significant connectivity problems for global websites dependent on Amazon’s cloud infrastructure.
AWS Confirms Root Cause Investigation
In a statement posted on its Service Health Dashboard, Amazon said:
“We can confirm significant error rates for requests made to the DynamoDB endpoint in the US-EAST-1 Region.”
A later update noted that engineers had “identified a potential root cause” and were “working on multiple parallel paths to accelerate recovery.”
AWS — the cloud computing arm of Amazon — provides the backbone for thousands of web applications, including finance, healthcare, logistics, and entertainment platforms. The outage underscored how dependent global digital systems have become on a few cloud providers.
Major Platforms Hit: From Coinbase to Signal
The incident triggered a chain reaction across the internet. Companies ranging from startups to Fortune 500 firms reported partial or total outages.
Among those affected were:
- Perplexity AI, an artificial intelligence startup, whose CEO Aravind Srinivas confirmed on X that “the root cause is an AWS issue.”
- Trading platform Robinhood, crypto exchange Coinbase, and messaging app Signal, which all rely heavily on AWS servers.
- Gaming and entertainment giants such as Roblox, Fortnite, Zoom, Duolingo, Canva, and Wordle, where users reported error messages and failed logins.
- Even Amazon’s own services — including Amazon.com, Prime Video, and Alexa — experienced slowdowns and outages, according to user reports on Downdetector.
Reuters also reported that Lyft, a major U.S. ride-hailing app, was down for thousands of users, while UK banking customers complained of payment delays and login errors on their mobile apps.
Economic and Security Ripples
The outage, though temporary, raised fresh concerns about the concentration of internet infrastructure in the hands of a few tech giants. AWS, alongside Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure, powers a vast share of the digital economy — hosting everything from government systems to financial institutions.
Analysts say such incidents expose systemic vulnerabilities in the global cloud ecosystem.
“When AWS sneezes, the internet catches a cold,” remarked one cybersecurity expert. “It’s a reminder that digital resilience and diversification are now national priorities.”
For sectors like cryptocurrency, e-commerce, and financial trading, even a few hours of downtime can translate into significant financial losses and data synchronization issues.
AWS Dominance and the Cloud Race
AWS controls roughly 31% of the global cloud infrastructure market, ahead of Microsoft Azure (25%) and Google Cloud (12%). Its clients include government agencies, Fortune 500 corporations, startups, and global NGOs.
The US-EAST-1 Region, located in Northern Virginia, is one of Amazon’s most critical data hubs — and historically, it’s been the source of several high-profile outages affecting streaming platforms, logistics networks, and fintech services.
Users Await Full Restoration
As of early Tuesday, Amazon engineers were still monitoring performance metrics and gradually restoring connectivity across affected services.
Many users, especially those relying on AI tools, remote collaboration apps, and crypto exchanges, continued to report intermittent disruptions.
AWS said it would provide a full post-incident analysis once stability is confirmed across all endpoints.
What This Means for Nigeria and Africa
Experts note that the ripple effect of AWS outages often extends to African users and startups relying on Amazon’s regional edge networks and content delivery services. In Nigeria, several fintech, media, and logistics platforms host parts of their operations on AWS infrastructure.
The latest disruption serves as a reminder for African developers and regulators to prioritize multi-cloud strategies, data redundancy, and local cloud capacity building to cushion against global infrastructure shocks.
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Reporting by Peter Anene, Business Editor in Lagos, Nigeria.
