Can Kenya’s AI ambitions coexist with Naivasha’s water needs?

Naivasha, Kenya – For communities living around Naivasha, water is not an abstract resource. It sustains families, livestock, farms and schools.That reality has taken on new significance after plans for a major Microsoft-G42 data centre in Olkaria, near Lake Naivasha, stalled in May 2026 over concerns about available power capacity.Microsoft and United Arab Emirates-based artificial intelligence company G42 announced the project in 2024 as part of a $1bn digital investment package for Kenya. The proposed facility was to run on geothermal energy and eventually scale to as much as 1 gigawatt of capacity.The uncertainty has also prompted questions about what another major industrial user could mean for water in a region where residents already report shortages.Microsoft and G42 said the proposed data centre campus would run entirely on renewable geothermal energy and incorporate water conservation technology. The companies did not disclose a project-specific water consumption figure in their 2024 announcement.Kenya Electricity Generating Company (KenGen) communications director Frank David Ochieng told Al Jazeera that the data centre remains at the design stage and that he could not c...