South African rights groups demand moratorium on US-backed AI data centers

Rest of World reports that civil rights groups in South Africa are pressing for a countrywide moratorium on data center expansion by American companies, in what it describes as one of the first coordinated efforts on the continent to slow AI infrastructure. Kashiefa Achmat of the Cape Town group Housing Assembly said the pause should cover all of South Africa. The country has the most data centers in Africa, mostly owned by US hyperscalers such as Microsoft, Amazon and Google and operators such as Equinix and Digital Realty, and McKinsey projects continental demand for compute could reach 2.2 gigawatts by 2030.

In August, Housing Assembly and the UK nonprofit Foxglove filed a legal challenge to two Equinix data centers proposed in Cape Town. Together with other groups they asked the national human rights commission to examine the projects and impose a pause on hyperscale expansion. They also seek rules obliging operators to disclose water and electricity use and to deliver benefits to local communities. The groups say the planned 174-megawatt facilities would draw over 4.4 billion liters of water a year, comparable to the yearly use of 18,000 homes, in a water-stressed country. An Equinix spokesperson said sustainable design is a starting point for the company.

The article places the protests alongside resistance in Virginia, California, Philadelphia, India and Brazil, New York's statewide moratorium in June, and a stalled Kenyan project by G42 and Microsoft. Experts quoted say transparency failures breed mistrust, but others, including an International Finance Corporation specialist, argue that Africa still needs capacity, since it holds about 409 megawatts, under 1 percent of the global total. Chinasa Okolo said he opposes uncontrolled expansion, not data centers as such.