On November 25, a group of 221 young workers from Malawi departed for Tel Aviv, from where they would disperse to work on Israeli farms. Israel’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development said in early November that the war with Hamas has significantly affected the country’s agricultural sector after thousands of foreign workers left the country. Given the limited employment prospects in Malawi, which ranks as the fourth poorest country globally according to the World Bank, the African nation has forged a partnership with Israel to provide farmworkers.

“We’re thinking of initially sending around 5,000 people,” said Malawi’s Information Minister, Moses Kunkuyu in a recent BBC interview. Amid a foreign currency crisis, the people of Malawi are also grappling with soaring prices and rampant inflation. Malawi’s Labor Secretary Wezi Kayira says it has been exporting labor to countries like Israel for a long time since it creates jobs for the country’s youth and generates foreign exchange.

They pick us up on buses every morning and we go to work on nearby farms and fields. We are aware of the tough situation in Gaza, but we feel safe

Malawian farmworker in Israel

“A portion of their wages will cover living costs in Israel, while the remainder will be remitted to personal accounts here in Malawi to boost foreign exchange,” said Kayira in a statement shared with the media.

EL PAÍS chatted on WhatsApp with a young man from Malawi who has been working on a farm in northern Israel picking and packaging fruit. He prefers not to share personal details or where he is living in Israel. “They pick us up on buses every morning and we go to work on nearby farms and fields,” he said. “We are aware of the tough situation in Gaza, but we feel safe.” He said laborers from Malawi have arrived on three flights so far, with the most recent one on November 25. He estimates that around 350 Malawians have arrived as of now. “We’re spread out in different locations — some of us work on livestock farms, while others pick vegetables.” The young man tells this newspaper that he came to Israel to earn money so he can pursue his education. “The economic situation in my country is very difficult.”

The labor-export agreement follows Israel’s recent $60 million aid package to support Malawi’s economic recovery. The country’s growth has stagnated amid macroeconomic imbalances that continue to deteriorate, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Malawi President Lazarus Chakwera has been criticized for the potential risks the agreement imposes on Malawian citizens traveling to conflict zones, as well as the lack of transparency surrounding its negotiation. “Sending people to a war-torn country like Israel, where some countries are withdrawing their labor is unheard of,” Malawian opposition leader Kondwani Nankhumwa told the BBC’s Newsday program.

Habiba Osman, executive director of the Malawi Human Rights Commission, is concerned about the secrecy surrounding the agreement. “The government did not provide any prior information even though transparency is their obligation. We still lack information about this agreement between Israel and Malawi. Our aim is to ensure there are no human rights violations,” said Osman, who noted that another Israeli plane landed at Lilongwe International Airport airport on November 28 and is still there.

Sending people to a war-torn country like Israel, where some countries are withdrawing their labor is unheard of

Malawian opposition leader Kondwani Nankhumwa

Safe environments and decent wages

In addition to security concerns, opposition and humanitarian organizations worry about the working conditions for Malawian citizens in Israel. In 2015, Human Rights Watch reported abuses towards foreign agricultural workers in the country. However, Minister Kayira said, “The deployed youth will work at certified and approved locations, which are classified as fit and safe environments with medical insurance and repatriation arrangements for the youth involved.”

Malawians have expressed interest in working in Israel since the initiative became public, and government recruiters have fanned out across the country to explain the details and contract conditions. The Times of Malawi reported that a recruiter based in Lilongwe conducted a meeting at Chiwoko Primary School and told the job seekers “they were going to Israel for fruit picking and the treatment of plants and vegetables, mainly in greenhouses. The contract is for three years of working eight hours a day, and the salary will be $1,500 per month.”

Malawi and Israel established diplomatic relations in 1964, which have remained intact even after other African nations cut ties after the 1973 Yom Kippur War. In 2020, Malawi expressed its intention to become the first African country to open an embassy in Jerusalem, a significant diplomatic decision that has yet to be finalized. Most countries maintain their embassies in Tel Aviv, as they do not recognize Israel’s sovereignty over eastern Jerusalem, which it occupied in 1967. They believe the status of this holy city should be subject to negotiation for a just and peaceful resolution between Israelis and Palestinians. The United States relocated its embassy to Jerusalem in 2018 during the Trump administration.

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One notable development is the acquisition of CoolIT Systems, a long-standing player in the liquid cooling market, by global investment company KKR. The deal, reportedly valued at $270 million, is aimed at enabling CoolIT to expand its operations and serve a wider range of global customers in the datacenter market. This market encompasses enterprise, high-performance computing (HPC), and cloud service provider segments.

KKR’s investment in CoolIT indicates its anticipation of a profitable return. However, their statements regarding the acquisition also reflect a recognition of the challenges facing the datacenter industry in terms of sustainability. Kyle Matter, Managing Director at KKR, emphasized the increasing data and computing needs and their potential environmental impact. He expressed a belief that liquid cooling plays a crucial role in reducing the emissions footprint of the digital economy.

Projections suggest that liquid cooling will witness significant growth, potentially capturing up to 26% of the datacenter thermal management market by 2026. This is driven by the deployment of more high-performance infrastructure. CoolIT, which is soon to be acquired, has already demonstrated its growth potential by securing a spot on the Financial Times’ list of fastest-growing US companies this year, ranking at number 218.

Alan Priestley, a former technical marketing manager at Intel and currently a VP analyst at Gartner, highlighted the necessity for many companies to invest in liquid cooling to address the challenges associated with managing high-performance servers. As processors become more powerful, liquid cooling offers an effective solution to address heat dissipation concerns and optimize server performance in datacenters.

According to Priestley, CPUs currently consume around 250W to 300W of power, while GPUs range from 300W to 500W. For servers handling demanding workloads such as AI training, those equipped with up to eight GPUs can draw as much as 7-10kW per node.

Priestley further explained that datacenters are striving to increase rack densities by incorporating more memory per node and higher-performance networking. Accommodating such heightened performance requirements necessitates increased power consumption.

Andrew Buss, a senior research director at IDC, concurred with this assessment. He emphasized that as chip or package power densities continue to rise, liquid cooling becomes a more efficient and preferred option.

Buss highlighted that support for direct liquid cooling loops is now being integrated into many modern datacenter facilities and colocation providers. He pointed out that companies like Atos/Bull have embraced direct contact liquid cooling loops for their power-dense high-performance computing (HPC) servers. This allows them to fit six AMD Epyc sockets with maximum memory, NVMe storage, and 100Gbps networking into a compact 1U chassis, all cooled by a custom cooling manifold.

The growing demand for higher performance and power-intensive applications is driving the need for efficient cooling solutions like liquid cooling in datacenters. By adopting liquid cooling technologies, datacenters can effectively manage the increasing power requirements of advanced processors and GPUs while maintaining optimal performance and mitigating potential heat-related issues.

According to Moises Levy, an expert in datacenter power and cooling research at Omdia, the global adoption of liquid cooling is expected to continue increasing.

Levy suggests that while liquid cooling has reached or is nearing a tipping point for specific applications with compute-intensive workloads, its widespread adoption in the broader datacenter market is still on the horizon. He highlights that direct-to-chip and immersion cooling technologies are likely to be the primary disruptors, projected to have the highest compound annual growth rate (CAGR) in the coming years.

Direct liquid cooling, supported by CoolIT, involves circulating a coolant, typically water, through cold plates directly attached to components like processors. This type of system is relatively easier to implement within existing rack infrastructure.

On the other hand, immersion cooling submerges the entire server node in a non-conductive dielectric fluid coolant. Specialized racks, some of which position the nodes vertically instead of horizontally, are typically required for this type of system. Immersion cooling tends to be favored for new-build server rooms.

As liquid cooling technologies continue to advance, their increasing adoption is expected to bring significant benefits to datacenters in terms of improved efficiency and enhanced cooling capabilities.

European cloud operator OVHcloud has developed a unique system that combines two cooling approaches for optimal performance. Their innovative solution involves utilizing water blocks attached to the CPU and GPU while employing immersion cooling with a dielectric fluid for the remaining components.

While OVHcloud currently reserves this system for their cloud infrastructure handling intensive workloads like AI, gaming, and high-performance compute (HPC) applications, they have indicated potential future expansion.

In a similar vein, GlobalConnect, a leading data center colocation provider, plans to offer immersion-based cooling as an option to all their customers. Teaming up with immersion cooling specialist GRC, GlobalConnect announced their system deployment in February. They aim to gradually introduce this advanced cooling technology across all 16 of their data centers located in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Germany, and Finland, based on customer demand.

The question arises: Can liquid cooling help achieve sustainability objectives? OVH shared that its combined system is significantly more efficient than traditional air cooling methods. They claim that in tests, their cooling system achieved a favorable partial power usage effectiveness rating (PUE) of 1.004, which specifically measures the energy consumed by the cooling system.

However, Buss, an industry expert, urged caution in adopting liquid cooling and emphasized the need for careful consideration, particularly in waste heat management. He highlighted that implementing “liquid cooling done right” can certainly contribute to enhanced efficiency and environmental sustainability by reducing reliance on compressor-based cooling and leveraging heat-exchanger technology to maintain optimal cooling loop temperatures.

Nevertheless, Buss emphasized the importance of proper implementation, as simply discharging the heat into the environment, such as a lake or river, can have detrimental effects. Therefore, the design of the ultimate heat path should be carefully planned to maximize reuse opportunities whenever feasible.

The European Union (EU) has recently expressed its desire to see more cities utilizing waste heat from data centers to heat residential homes. However, challenges arise because the heat generated is often not at a sufficiently high temperature, necessitating additional energy consumption to address this limitation. Despite these obstacles, some data center operators, like QTS in the Groningen region of the Netherlands, have ventured into exploring such initiatives.

In the previous year, the United States Department of Energy made investments in projects aimed at reducing energy consumption for cooling purposes in data centers, albeit with a relatively modest funding amount of $42 million. Additionally, we highlighted the swift adoption of liquid cooling by Chinese data centers as a response to new government regulations.

Among the liquid cooling vendors that secured investments was Iceotope, a UK-based company that received £30 million ($35.7 million at the time) in a funding round led by a Singapore-based private equity provider, with a focus on penetrating the Asian market.

Intel also forged a partnership with Green Revolution Cooling to explore liquid immersion technology. However, the chip giant recently decided to halt its plans for a $700 million research and development lab dedicated to cooling technology in Oregon, as part of its cost-cutting measures.