INTERVIEW: Is Africa Paying the Price for Silicon Valley’s AI Boom?

Artificial intelligence is triggering a global investment boom, but could the race to build data centres leave African countries with higher energy costs, heavier debt burdens and fewer resources for healthcare, education and climate action? With data centres’ electricity consumption projected to more than double by 2030, the competition for power, water, critical minerals and capital is raising urgent questions about who benefits from AI and who bears its costs. In this interview with Impact Newswire, Faustine Ngila speaks to Dr. Maria Ron Balsera, executive director of the New York-based Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR).

The rapid expansion of artificial intelligence is creating new demands on the electricity, water, critical minerals and capital needed to build and operate data centres, raising questions about who benefits from the technology boom and who bears its costs.

The International Energy Agency estimates that data centres consumed about 415 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2024, equivalent to around 1.5% of global electricity consumption, and projects that demand could rise to approximately 945 terawatt-hours by 2030, driven largely by AI and other digital services.

The expansion comes amid persistent development deficits: an estimated 2.1 billion people worldwide lacked access to safely managed drinking water in 2022, while 2.3 billion experienced moderate or severe food insecurity. In energy, the World Bank and partner agencies estimated that 685 million people lacked electricity access in 2022, with sub-Saharan Africa accounting for the largest share of those without power.

The investment race also intersects with a global financing gap that threatens countries’ ability to expand healthcare, education, electricity access and climate resilience. The OECD reported that developed countries provided and mobilised $115.9 billion in climate finance for developing countries in 2022, surpassing the long-standing $100 billion annual target for the first time, two years after the original deadline.

At COP29 in 2024, countries agreed on a new goal of at least $300 billion annually by 2035, alongside a broader ambition to scale up climate finance from all sources to $1.3 trillion a year by the same date. Yet much climate finance continues to arrive as loans, potentially increasing debt-servicing pressures in countries already struggling to fund essential services.

In Kenya, where renewable sources account for the overwhelming majority of domestic electricity generation, the debate raises questions about whether new energy infrastructure will prioritise affordable power for households and local industry or increasingly serve energy-intensive, foreign-owned data centres.

The issue extends beyond electricity consumption to data-centre water requirements, demand for minerals used in computing infrastructure, the distribution of AI’s economic gains and the potential displacement of workers as businesses automate tasks.

AI-powered facial recognition, surveillance and predictive policing also raise concerns about privacy, discrimination and the suppression of civic freedoms, particularly where public protests over taxation, debt and austerity have exposed tensions between governments and citizens.

The Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR) has examined related concerns in its work on the relationship between international financial institutions, debt policies, public spending and democratic accountability.

Against this backdrop, Faustine Ngila speaks to Dr. Maria Ron Balsera, executive director of the New York-based Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR), about whether the AI investment boom risks diverting scarce resources from development priorities, how the World Bank and International Monetary Fund should respond to the technology’s energy and financing demands, and what reforms are needed to prevent developing countries from accumulating more debt while bearing the environmental and social costs of infrastructure that primarily benefits powerful technology companies.

Here’s the full interview, edited for congruence.

1. How should the World Bank address AI’s growing energy demands and its implications for climate change and development finance?

AI is becoming a dangerous distraction from the real development challenges we face. While private investors pour billions into an increasingly speculative AI boom, countries like Kenya struggle to finance essential public services, expand electricity access and confront the climate crisis. AI is competing for the same energy, critical minerals and scarce capital that Africa desperately needs for its development. The World Bank should be asking whose development this investment serves, and at whose expense. It should also factor in the infrastructure needs, including water usage, in contrast with the potential effect on destruction on jobs.

2. What human rights risks arise from AI deployment, and how can international institutions ensure accountability?

AI is not just an economic or technological issue. It can also be a threat to democracy and civic freedoms. Facial recognition, AI-powered surveillance and predictive policing can be weaponised to monitor activists, suppress protests and silence dissent. As CESR highlights in its Surcharging Democracy report, debt and austerity policies can fuel public discontent while undermining democratic accountability. In countries like Kenya, where people have mobilised against unfair taxation and austerity, AI risks becoming another tool of repression. We urgently need binding human rights red lines: no mass surveillance, no discriminatory automated decisions, and no deployment of AI in essential public services without transparency, accountability and meaningful human oversight. And of course, the protection of human and the planet against rogue AI agents, or its use for weapons of mass destruction. 

3. How can developing countries finance AI infrastructure without worsening debt burdens or diverting resources from essential public services?

Africa cannot afford to mortgage its future to finance someone else’s AI boom. Countries like Kenya already face impossible choices between servicing debt and investing in health, education and climate resilience. Now they are being encouraged to compete for scarce capital to build expensive, energy-hungry AI infrastructure, often benefiting foreign technology companies. This risks driving up the cost of capital and further pricing low- and middle-income countries out of financing their development priorities. We must reject a model that socialises the risks and costs while privatising the profits. Public resources must serve public needs first.

The question is not whether Africa can afford to invest in AI. The question is whether Africa can afford another development model where it supplies the resources, absorbs the risks and pays the costs, while the wealth and power accumulate elsewhere.

Technology should serve human rights and collective well-being, not dictate our development priorities. The problem is not AI itself, but an economic model that prioritises speculative profits over public needs, concentrates power in a handful of corporations and leaves countries in the Global South bearing the costs. We need to reclaim democratic control over technology, finance, and the resources essential to our collective future.

The AI boom exposes a profound injustice in the global economy: capital flows towards speculative technologies promising enormous private returns, while African countries are priced out of financing essential infrastructure, public services and climate action. This is not a shortage of money. It is a failure of how our global financial system allocates resources.

4. What global AI governance reforms would ensure developing countries have a meaningful voice and benefit equitably from the technology?

Africa must not become merely a supplier of critical minerals, cheap labour, energy and data for an AI revolution controlled elsewhere. We have seen this extractive model before. Global AI governance must be democratic, anchored in the UN and grounded in human rights, not dictated by a handful of powerful governments and technology corporations. We urgently need binding global rules to protect sovereign natural resources, human rights, prevent surveillance and discrimination, and ensure corporate accountability. African countries need real decision-making power, not just a seat at the table after the rules have been written.

We are witnessing a massive diversion of capital, energy and political attention towards a speculative AI boom, while the real development needs of billions of people remain underfunded. Africa should not have to compete with Silicon Valley’s AI ambitions for the resources it needs to secure a sustainable future for its people.

5. How can the IMF and World Bank prevent debt repayments from undermining healthcare, education and other essential public services?

The IMF and World Bank cannot keep preaching development while supporting an economic system that prioritises creditors over people’s rights. In countries like Kenya, debt servicing is squeezing the resources available for healthcare, education and other essential public services, while governments are pressured to raise regressive taxes and impose austerity. As our Surcharging Democracy research shows, these policies can also undermine democracy, fuelling discontent and repression. We need meaningful debt cancellation and restructuring, an end to austerity-driven conditionalities, and fairer international tax rules. Human rights must come before debt repayments and creditor profits.

6. What structural reforms are needed to make climate finance more affordable and accessible to developing countries?

Africa is being asked to pay a premium to address a climate crisis it did little to create. Developing countries face higher borrowing costs, while much climate finance still comes as loans, adding to debt burdens. Meanwhile, the $100 billion annual climate finance goal was only exceeded in 2022, two years late, and it falls far short of developing countries’ needs, estimated at $1.3 trillion annually by 2035. Structural reform means shifting towards grants and genuinely concessional public finance, delivering reparations in line with historical responsibility, and reforming an international financial architecture that penalises vulnerable countries. The legal landscape has changed with regard to climate financing with the ICJ and the IACHR advisory opinions, climate finance is not charity: it is a matter of justice, human rights and legal obligations. We need a reformed global financial architecture that puts people and the planet before creditors’ interests.

7. How can African countries finance the energy transition while maintaining energy affordability and expanding electricity access?

Africa’s energy transition cannot become another extractive project designed to serve the Global North. Kenya has enormous renewable energy potential, but the priority must be affordable, reliable energy for its people, not simply powering foreign-owned data centres or supplying green energy and critical minerals to richer economies. Public investment, international climate finance, technology transfer and democratic control over energy resources are essential. The energy transition must reduce inequality, expand access and create decent jobs, rather than reproduce colonial patterns of extraction.

8. What changes to the international financial architecture are needed to ensure climate finance supports vulnerable communities without deepening debt burdens?

The fundamental problem is that the international financial architecture treats climate finance as another investment opportunity rather than an obligation rooted in justice and human rights. African countries are being pushed to borrow at high costs to address damage they did not cause, while private investors capture the most profitable opportunities. Financilising climate, and derisking its investment by diverting much needed public funds to attract foreign investors. We need a shift from loans to grants, from private profit to public purpose, and from creditor dominance to democratic decision-making. Climate finance must expand countries’ fiscal space, not shrink it, and reach the communities most affected by the crisis.

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