A dozen years ago Avishay Braverman, then-president of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, announced his visionary plan to create a hi-tech campus in Beersheba. The idea was derided as yet another bombastic statement that would never come to fruition.
However, anyone who hasn’t visited Beersheba in the last decade would be astounded to see that the city, and the Negev desert that surrounds it, has emerged as Israel’s national cyber center, fostering collaboration among academia, multinational companies, and the IDF.
Israel’s South has long been the source of pioneering arid lands technologies. In recent years, the number of internationally recognized innovative desert-related projects has also skyrocketed.
There are, of course, many strategic partners to these extraordinary ongoing developments: the Israel Innovation Authority; Ben-Gurion University of the Negev; Elbit Systems; Dell Technologies; Soroka Medical Center; and Mor Research Applications, to name just a few of the principal institutions and consortia.
Pioneering spirit
One of the most influential organizations focusing specifically on the development of the Negev is the Merage Foundation Israel, a private philanthropy founded by David and Laura Merage in 1998.
The foundation, “based on the pioneering spirit, entrepreneurship, and innovation of Israel,” has dedicated much of its resources to Negev development, fostering projects and start-ups in climate technologies and R&D-based innovations in robotics and cyber security, to attract companies to the South.
The familiar statistic is still true: The southern Negev region constitutes 60% of Israel’s land but has less than 10% of its population.
“We knew from day one of the creation of this state that we needed to thrive in desert environments. And we have all this know-how that we should commercialize,” Merage Foundation CEO Nicole Hod Stroh told The Jerusalem Report.
“If we transform the Negev into a global hub of desert innovation, agrotourism, and tourism, it will become an attractive magnet for young people who will want to move and work in the Negev. We really see it as a national existential opportunity,” she said.
“Necessity is the mother of invention” as that sometimes overused proverb goes. But it explains why major inventions in arid lands science and technology have been developed in the living laboratory of the Negev.
“We realized that there’s a lot of know-how in desert agriculture, water management, and renewable energy, but we weren’t very good at commercializing and monetizing that expertise,” Hod Stroh continued, relating that the Merage Foundation has provided platforms in several sectors connecting researchers and developers to potential investors.
Sustainable tech
To accelerate the development of technologies that enable sustainable living in arid climates, the Israel Innovation Authority established the DeserTech and Climate Innovation Center three years ago. Backed by Merage and five other major organizations, the center targets initiatives and new start-ups that have not yet found a market.
“We help them find resources, make connections, and – vitally – exchange knowledge with industry players,” said DeserTech director Sivan Cohen Shachari.
“The Negev is the metaphoric sandbox where these arid zones ideas can be tested, so we connect the projects to various sites, including agriculture,” she explained. “We help guide people with innovative ideas through all the processes.”
In other words: DeserTech matches needs with solutions and, with luck, business opportunities. In the last three years, DeserTech has shepherded more than 40 initiatives in various ways and expects another 20 projects in the near future.
One “quirky” example is the Russian immigrant entrepreneur who converted protein-rich waste from dates to produce high-quality fish food.
There are R&D agricultural projects throughout the Negev, each focusing on different needs in each micro-climate. How, for example, do you grow crops in saline water?
“No one in the world knew how to do this, but the researchers brought the solutions to local farmers, who succeeded and then gained a competitive advantage,” Cohen Shachari said.
“Farmers in Morocco or Azerbaijan also want to know how to do this. That knowledge can be shared, but it has a price tag.”
Offering solutions
One successful project that addresses the global problem of how to treat wastewater in communities that are off grid, – i.e., not connected to a central system – is Laguna Innovation.
“In most of the developing world, access to this kind of infrastructure is impossible, so sewage disposal becomes a real challenge, as does sanitation and hygiene, creating environmental and public health hazards,” Laguna co-founder & CEO Clive Lipchin told the Report.
“For these communities, the problem is not only [accessing] drinking water but also how to get recycled water for agriculture,” he said.
The company used its system in the Negev’s unrecognized Bedouin villages and is now marketing it in Israel and abroad.
“Laguna Innovation is our role model of a system that was developed, tested, and validated in the Negev, a company that was established here,” declares DeserTech’s Cohen Shachari.
In the realm of encouraging ecotourism in the South, the Merage Foundation has set up a platform to develop wine tourism via the Negev Wine Consortium, made up of 30 (count them!) wineries and vineyards, proving it’s possible to produce wine in hostile desert conditions.
The foundation’s stated goal is to “promote sustainable and inclusive prosperity to the Negev region by strengthening the main drivers of economic growth and revitalizing city centers.”
In the competitive hi-tech environment, this includes cultivating entrepreneurship with a special focus on healthcare and biotech, indoor robotics, and cybersecurity.
Premier tech hub
In 2023, together with Dell, Elbit, Ben-Gurion University, and Soroka Medical Center, Merage won an Israel Innovation Authority tender to create the Synergy7 Tech Labs Hub.
As part of Beersheba’s transformation, what was once a huge bare brown lot next to Ben-Gurion University is now a premier hi-tech hub. This is the Gav-Yam Negev Advanced Technologies Park, where Synergy7 has its offices. The new high-rise park has become a center of cutting-edge cybersecurity development, artificial intelligence, and defense.
The Synergy7 consortium serves as a “venture studio” as CEO Harel Ram describes it – an infrastructure that attracts and supports companies and start-ups in biotech, robotics, and cybersecurity that want to do business in the South.
In the brief period between the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Gaza, hundreds of foreign delegations from all over the world visited Beersheba, curious about a remote region where there has been economic growth.
In meetings with many of the visitors, Synergy7’s Ram said he learned what their greatest concerns were.
“They mentioned cybersecurity, homeland security, and medical issues. I realized that we have some things to offer in all of these areas. In a word, crisis management,” he said.
“It’s very, very hard to establish a viable company,” Ram stated. “Does it answer a need? Does it offer something that will interest venture capitalists? It requires a lot of resources, which is what we are trying to provide. Synergy7 is now working with 300 companies, each in various stages of development, helping with business plans and presentations. All during these very difficult times.”
As Merage executive director Hod Stroh noted: “The foundation’s paramount question has always been ‘What problem can we solve?’ The world is hungry for solutions, and that opens more opportunities for meaningful intervention. It’s not just about funding someone but about leveraging a project, serving as a catalyst. This philosophy is behind all the projects the foundation supports.”■