Africa’s embrace of solar energy is often framed as a climate-conscious leap, but several studies suggest the driving force is primarily affordability and the urgent need to address chronic grid instability rather than climate mitigation alone. One only needs to ask the millions of Nigerians frustrated by blackouts and unstable power supply, or South Africans navigating the inconvenience of load shedding, who see solar panels as a Hail Mary to keep the lights on rather than this climate-conscious leap. But this practical response to infrastructure failure has deeper implications that extend beyond individual energy choices. Research on energy transitions in South Africa by political scientist Tobias Kalt and colleagues identifies how ‘green’ energy development can slide into green extractivism, where infrastructure is shaped to meet external markets and investment flows rather than local energy justice.

Political economist and scholar of political ecology Natacha Bruna’s work on Mozambique adds a sharper critique, showing how the language of sustainability can mask the extraction of resources and emission rights from rural communities to feed global ‘green’ capital accumulation. In her 2023 book, The Rise of Green Extractivism, Bruna defines green extractivism as ‘the process of extracting and expropriating emission rights from rural poor while feeding and legitimizing external capital accumulation with adverse implications to extractive regions.’ Seen through the lens of how ostensibly ‘green’ energy solutions can replicate older inequalities by transferring environmental costs to vulnerable populations while enabling resource flows to wealthier markets, the race to power AI-ready data centres risks hardwiring these same extractive relationships into Africa’s digital future, even as it wears the language of progress and innovation.

In the case of solar photovoltaic systems, that is, solar panels that convert sunlight directly into electricity using photovoltaic cells typically made from silicon, environmental studies professor, Dustin Mulvaney’s analysis highlights the heavy embodied emissions and ecological costs of Chinese-made panels, whose polysilicon production is concentrated in coal-powered Xinjiang and reliant on critical minerals sourced from Africa itself. China, the world’s largest producer, powers much of its solar supply chain with coal-fired electricity, and nearly 80 per cent of global polysilicon production occurs in China, predominantly in Xinjiang, where coal-based energy is the norm. The extraction of quartz, copper, and rare earth elements needed for solar modules also generates toxic by-products, including heavy metals and radioactive waste.

A 2012 review of rare earth elements by Robert J. Weber and David J. Reisman presented at the US Environmental Protection Agency estimates that rare earth extraction can produce up to 2,000 tonnes of waste per tonne of rare earth mined. These upstream impacts are compounded by weak end-of-life planning. In this context, weak end-of-life planning refers to the lack of systems to collect, process, recycle, for safely dispose of solar modules and batteries once they expire. Across much of Africa, there is little infrastructure to manage electronic waste. The United Nations’ 2023 Global E-waste Monitor reports that Africa only recycles around one per cent of its e-waste, and solar technologies, particularly off-grid units, are rarely accounted for in existing systems. A 2022 study by the Global Off-Grid Lighting Association also found that few solar companies on the continent have effective take-back schemes or recycling pathways for expired systems.

The risks extend beyond solar technology itself. Africa supplies many of the critical minerals used in renewable energy and AI hardware, including cobalt and rare earth elements. The Democratic Republic of the Congo provides over 70 per cent of the world’s cobalt, much of it mined under hazardous conditions, while lithium and graphite extraction projects are expanding in Zimbabwe and Mozambique. Without local processing capacity or strict environmental governance, the continent risks being locked into a dual role as both a site of extraction and as a dumping ground for the waste generated by the global energy transition. The African Development Bank’s assessment on rare earth elements shows that the absence of local refining and beneficiation, where raw minerals are exported without doing the initial processing steps that would add value and reduce shipping costs, results in raw mineral exports that leaves countries highly vulnerable to both environmental degradation and global price shocks. Similar 2024 findings from the UN Economic Commission for Africa stress that without domestic processing capacity, African states risk remaining on the lowest rung of the clean-energy value chain while absorbing the ecological costs.

These dynamics raise serious concerns about environmental justice. While wealthy countries shift toward low-carbon technologies, African nations increasingly serve as markets for resource-intensive goods produced with high emissions and toxic waste. Later, these same countries are likely to bear the burden of disposal. African leaders have begun to raise these concerns, with a 2024 resolution calling for equitable benefit-sharing in the extraction of transition minerals used in solar and battery technologies. Together, these studies and interventions suggest that Africa’s AI energy transition risks becoming a textbook example of green extractivism, a system where the continent’s resources, energy systems and ecosystems subsidise global ‘green’ ambitions while the costs are borne locally. All evidence points us to the fact that the conversation on AI and energy in Africa cannot be separated from extractivism, as the continent’s digital future is being built within a global system that has long externalized costs southward. The AI energy question makes clear that the issue is not only technical but also political and historical; it is about whether Africa’s AI future will replicate the continent’s past as a site of extraction or chart a path to true energy autonomy.