South African activists push back on data center rush
A little boy balanced a large bottle of water on his shoulder as he returned from a communal tap near land acquired by a major data center developer in South Africa’s water-scarce city of Cape Town.
In the maze-like community of Barcelona, there is no piped water or sanitation in the small metal homes that bake in the heat, and older residents pay boys a few rands to go to the tap for them.
The prospect of a water- and power-hungry hyperscale data center near areas of the city where thousands of people lack proper access to these resources has alarmed activists.
Civil society groups have demanded a halt in the construction of new centers in South Africa—which already has more than 60, the most on the continent—pending the establishment of dedicated regulations in a boom sector being driven by artificial intelligence.
“It’s a direct land issue,” said Housing Assembly (HA) movement activist Kenneth Matlawe, who lived in Barcelona for 15 years.
“It affects the water and sanitation policy. It affects socioeconomic development because any form of development must benefit the community,” he told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
HA has been joined by UK nonprofit Foxglove and other groups in appealing the city’s rezoning of a portion of land near Barcelona acquired by US-based Equinix, which operates around 280 data centers worldwide.
Fastest expansion
The government is welcoming data center investment to promote the country—home to the fastest expansion on the continent—as “Africa’s digital gateway.”
But HA and the Extinction Rebellion climate group called in a petition to the Cape Town mayor in September for a halt until “clearly defined, enforceable regulations and standards are in place to govern this rapidly expanding industry.”
The city has around a dozen centers and has approved licenses for five more.
In a submission to the South African Human Rights Commission, they said hyperscale data center facilities could consume more than 4.4 billion liters of water a year, if the standard cooling method was used.
This equaled the annual water use of more than 18,000 households, they said.
Water supply is a fraught issue in Cape Town which narrowly avoided a “Day Zero” water shutdown in 2018 and could reportedly face restrictions from December as the warming El Niño weather pattern takes hold.
