RACA Journal I October 2026 www. refrigerationandaircon. co. za 29
DATA CENTRE FEATURE SERIES
hospitals, critical government systems or municipal operations, they may not be prioritised for water allocation in crisis scenarios.
This raises an uncomfortable but necessary question for operators: what exactly are you essential to? If your client base includes healthcare, emergency communication and public utilities, you have a stronger claim to water continuity in a crisis than if you are mainly hosting ad‐tech or entertainment workloads.
In other resource‐intensive sectors – most notably mining – South Africa and several other African countries have long experience striking agreements where communities concede certain uses of land or water in exchange for tangible local benefits, including:
• Recycling and routing treated water back into the community
• Local infrastructure upgrades
• Explicit employment and upskilling commitments
In water‐stressed regions especially, technical licences are not enough. Without social legitimacy, your project is permanently vulnerable – to protests, legal challenges and political backlash.
Data centres are only beginning to enter this terrain. But the principles transfer almost one‐for‐one:
• If you abstract water, can you return some of it in a usable form?
• If you build advanced digital infrastructure, can you embed training and job pathways for local youth?
• If you claim sustainability leadership, can you demonstrate it in ways communities can see, feel and verify?
In a continent with the largest youth population in the world, success is not just measured in megawatts and PUE( Power Usage Effectiveness), but in how many people find durable, skilled work in and around these facilities.
SCALING AI WITHOUT SACRIFICING WATER SECURITY Looking a decade ahead, the most thoughtful contribution on the panel sketched a version of success that went beyond technology:
• Youth employment and upskilling: data centres and AI workloads becoming engines for tech careers for African youth.
• Minimal net impact on local water security: closed‐loop and advanced cooling, combined with better municipal infrastructure, so digital growth does not translate into water stress.
• Institutionalised community upliftment: community benefits and participation built into project design, rather than retrofitted under pressure.
• Mature, credible regulation: guidelines that give clarity without suffocating innovation – tight enough to prevent abuse, light enough to let responsible projects move quickly.
Strip away the sensationalism, and the real African conversation about water and data centres is not‘ Are they evil?’ but:
• How do we fix the leaky pipe of state capacity and infrastructure?
• How do we lock in the right to water while still attracting capital‐intensive digital infrastructure?
• How do we ensure that in 10 – 20 years, today’ s build‐out is remembered for jobs, skills and reliability – not for yet another wave of extractive development?
The most interesting part of this panel wasn’ t the alarmism about AI’ s thirst. It was the quieter, legal‐technical and community‐focused insights: where decisions are really made, what the law already says, where documentation fails and how social trust is earned. RACA
Data artificial centres intelligence
RACA Journal I October 2026 www. refrigerationandaircon. co. za 29