South Africa’s rapidly growing data centre sector is currently operating without a centralised public record, making it difficult for officials and citizens to track its cumulative consumption of vital resources.
Data Centres are building facilities that house computer servers that store digital information. The surge in AI use adds the demand for more data centres as more information will need to be stored.
However, South Africa does not have enough affordable electricity or clean water to meet the water demands of data centres. Daily we hear reports about water restrictions, losses, unavailability and pollution and yet the focus is on serving the tech needs versus those of humans. These big investments will either be another scandal in which profits are prioritised over people, or an opportunity for communities to shape the future of investment.
The African Centre for Biodiversity (ACB) has responded to the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC)’s call for submissions into an inquiry into data centres and human rights in South Africa by submitting detailed comments.
It challenges the dominant narrative that data centres, cloud services and artificial intelligence infrastructure are clean, immaterial, or automatically beneficial.
Data centres are not simply “digital” infrastructure: they are resource-intensive industrial systems that depend on land, electricity, water, cooling systems, backup generation, fibre networks, batteries, minerals, hardware supply chains and waste-management systems.
As a result South Africa urgently needs a human rights-centred governance framework for data centres and associated digital infrastructure.
Such a framework must place constitutional rights, environmental justice, food and water security, equality, dignity, access to information, public participation, and corporate accountability at the centre of decision-making. It must assess not only the data-centre building itself, but the full infrastructure chain that enables it—including off-site renewable energy projects, wheeling arrangements, grid connections, backup systems, land-use approvals, water impacts, e-waste, data governance and corporate ownership.
They are calling for a national inventory of existing and proposed data centres and their linked infrastructure, full public disclosure of energy and water demands, mandatory human-rights and environmental due diligence, meaningful community participation, protection of food-producing land and rural livelihoods, and enforceable safeguards to ensure that low-income communities, farm workers, smallholder producers and under-serviced municipalities do not bear the costs of corporate digital expansion.
This isn’t a question as to whether South Africa should participate in the digital economy, but who benefits, who pays, who controls the infrastructure and data, and who bears the environmental, social, and human rights burdens.
Add your name to demand regulation & community involvement now!
This article was based on awethu.amandla petition and ACB’s press release. Content shared with permission: https://t2m.io/datacentres_SAHRC_post
Sources: https://www.news.uct.ac.za/images/userfiles/downloads/media/2026_10_05_DataCentre.pdf
Further reading:
https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2026-10-12-data-centres
