The “Attaa Digital Hackathon,” organized by the Saudi Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, has been concluded, as part of Attaa Digital initiative. The Hackathon has been held in cooperation with the Islamic World Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (ICESCO) and the initiative's partners in Egypt, namely the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT), the Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA), and RiseUp Summit.
The three-day Hackathon was held on August 29-31, in Egypt. Egypt hosted the first edition of the Attaa Digital Hackathon, which is the first program implemented within the agreement signed between the Saudi Ministry of Communications and Information Technology and ICESCO. The Hackathon is aimed to strengthen partnerships with academic entities and universities in training calibers, building capacities, and motivating youth to enrich the Arabic technical content and raise digital awareness among Arab communities worldwide.
During the closing ceremony, the projects nominated to win the prizes were presented and three winners were announced. The first-place winner "The Solutionists" won a prize of EGP 50K, the second-place winner "Assiut Geeks" had a prize of EGP 35K, and the third-place winner "Ana Amn" won EGP 25K.
MCIT is eager to cooperate with its partners on inspiring the Arab youth on innovation and creativity to develop digital content industry in Arabic. This would lead to maintaining the Arab identity, strengthening outreach to various civilizations and cultures, and developing the knowledge economy in Arab countries.
The top priority of Egypt’s ICT strategy is to support technological creativity and innovation and nurture talents. Egypt strives to optimize returns and increase the value-added share across different industries. MCIT intensifies efforts of research and development (R&D) to maximize the benefits of the knowledge economy, which has become the key driver for development, growth, and prosperity of countries. MCIT is keen to prepare a talent pool qualified for knowledge and digital transformation. It has doubled investments in training and developing digital skills. The Ministry seeks to upskill 225,000 trainees, at a cost of one billion and 300 million pounds within the current fiscal year. Egypt’s digital exports hit USD 4.9 billion in FY 2021/2022.
It is worth noting that Egypt has numerous success stories in knowledge and technical Arabic content production. Mahara-Tech platform of MCIT provides several free high-quality training programs in the Arabic language in different technical fields. This year, the platform won Digital Arabic Content (DAC) Award provided by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) in cooperation with World Summit Awards (WSA).
