How AI's water consumption impacts women in Southern Africa

Dr Lize Barclay

Water scarcity in Southern Africa is not gender neutral. When taps run dry, it is most often women and girls who walk further, wait longer and carry heavier loads. What should be a basic human necessity becomes a daily negotiation, one that quietly reinforces inequality across rural villages and urban suburbs alike.

Women and girls in Southern Africa shoulder the primary responsibility for water collection, often spending over 30 minutes per trip, but sometimes as much as 8 hours collectively, as they are responsible for 87% of the labour to secure water for households without on-site access.

Water-bearing responsibilities

According to the WWF, adult women take responsibility for 56% of water bearing and girls 31% of water bearing in the rural areas of South Africa. Adult men only represent 3% of water collection. The water is collected from boreholes, rivers, dams and communal taps, which could often be a long and dangerous walk from the household.

These water-bearing responsibilities have health implications, apart from health risks from contaminated sources, in that carrying the heavy water containers could cause long-term musculoskeletal problems.

Safety risks

There are also safety risks from violence, assault and attack by animals that women and girls have to suffer in their duties. Quite often, girls miss out on school, fully or partially, due to their water-fetching responsibilities and lack of proper sanitation. The water collection duties also hamper women from fully engaging in economic participation, whether formally or informally. Furthermore, it impacts the ability of women and girls to fully rest, create and participate in society.

Although there is a notable increase in household rainwater capture and water storage facilities in rural and suburban areas, quite often, municipal regulations are not gender sensitive in their regulation thereof. Innovation and “appropriate technologies” have been leveraged to create rolling drums, such as the Hippo Water Roller, as well as solar-powered pay-as-you-go irrigation systems, solar-powered borehole pumps and fog catchers. In densely packed urban areas, there is often insufficient space for these alternatives and thus, collective water points are the only options.

Cities are not spared from gendered water responsibilities. The women of Sandton, South Africa’s wealthiest square kilometre, are not insulated from the burden carried by their rural counterparts. Johannesburg, the continent’s financial capital, has become one of Southern Africa’s most acute urban water disasters. In urban areas in Southern Africa, water shortages are caused by droughts, rapid unplanned urbanisation, old infrastructure, budgetary constraints regarding the upkeep of water infrastructure and electricity network downtime. 

Since 2023, water outages across Johannesburg have grown in frequency and duration, leaving nearly half the city facing regular shortages. The city loses an estimated 46-48% of its water through leaking pipes, pipe bursts, illegal connections and failing reservoirs. It is still, however, predominantly the responsibility of women to ensure that food is prepared, clothes, children and the household is cleaned, and emergency water is available.

Artificial intelligence

Into this already strained landscape, a new and largely invisible consumer has arrived, that being artificial intelligence. Every Chabot query, every generated image, every AI-assisted document passed through a data centre, and data centres are extraordinarily thirsty. They require vast quantities of water to cool the servers that power the computations behind modern AI.

Most data centres use water-based, evaporative cooling systems to prevent servers from overheating. Data centres in hot, dry areas consume more water, and as AI models become more advanced, their water consumption also increases. A simple query could use around 500 ml of water. A 100-megawatt data centre can consume about 25.5 million litres of water per year. It has been estimated that AI systems’ total water footprint could have been 765 billion litres in 2025 alone.

Water management

Southern Africa’s data centre boom, fuelled by AI, intensifies this strain as facilities guzzle water for server cooling amid droughts, which threatens already precarious water supplies, with little transparency on environmental costs. This tech thirst disproportionately harms women, who manage household water amid scarcity. When water tables drop, when municipal systems fail, when rivers run dry, it is the women who adapt. It is women who walk further, wait longer, and carry more.

The litres of water consumed by data centres are experienced, at ground level, as longer journeys and heavier loads for women. While AI promises tools for water management, its unchecked water footprint mocks gender equity pledges, prioritising corporate servers over rural taps.

World Water Day 2026 arrives amidst compounding crises as climate change is making water scarcer, AI is making technology more water-hungry and the women and girls of Southern Africa are, as they have already been, left to carry the burden. It is a complex systemic issue that requires grassroots participation, cultural reform, high-level decision-making, and innovation to ensure a water-rich, equitable and sustainable future for all.

*Barclay is a Senior Lecturer in Futures Studies and Systems Thinking at Stellenbosch Business School

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