FEEDING BIG TECH OR FEEDING AFRICA?
HOW DATA CENTRES THREATEN LAND, WATER, AND FOOD SYSTEMS | |
|---|
|
|---|
Fact sheet 4 in our series: Digital infrastructure: implications for Africa’s environment, agriculture, and food systems
Africa is rapidly being repositioned as the next frontier for Big Tech’s data centre expansion—but behind the language of “cloud computing” and digital progress lies a deeply material reality.
This new ACB fact sheet exposes how data centres, far from being immaterial infrastructure, are land-hungry, water-intensive, and energy-demanding industrial complexes. As they proliferate across the continent, they are being built on the same land, drawing from the same water sources, and competing for the same electricity that small-scale farmers, rural communities, and food producers depend on for survival. At a time of deepening climate stress, water scarcity, and food insecurity, these developments raise urgent questions about whose needs are being prioritised—and at what cost.
Africa’s digitalisation pathway is unfolding without adequate public scrutiny, regulatory safeguards, or meaningful engagement with affected communities. Governments are aggressively courting investment, while Big Tech companies and their partners continue to obscure the full environmental and social costs of their operations. From the “breadbasket” regions of South Africa to emerging data hubs across East and West Africa, the expansion of data infrastructure risks accelerating land dispossession, deepening water crises, and diverting renewable energy away from people and food systems into privately controlled digital economies.
This fact sheet calls for a decisive shift: full transparency on resource use, binding safeguards to protect land and water, and policy frameworks that place food sovereignty, community rights, and ecological sustainability at the centre of digital transitions. As civil society, policymakers, and communities engage with these issues, the central question is clear—will Africa’s land, water, and energy sustain life and livelihoods, or will they be redirected to power the data demands of global capital? | |
|
|
|
