10-Year-Old Egyptian Programmer Ranks Among World’s Top 2%

Ten-year-old Egyptian programmer Martiros Mina has been honoured after winning a gold medal in an international Python programming competition and ranking among the top 2% of participants worldwide.

Mina, a fourth-grade pupil, will also be admitted to the Robotics and Embedded Systems track of the Digital Egypt Cubs initiative despite being younger than the programme’s usual minimum age of 12. He will first undergo an assessment to determine the training level best suited to his programming and technical skills.

His interest in robotics began at an early age. Mina built his first robot when he was five, began studying programming at a specialised academy the following year and entered his first local competitions at seven. From the age of eight, he began competing internationally in China, Estonia and Romania, earning several awards and top rankings.

During a meeting with Minister of Communications and Information Technology Raafat Hendy, Mina also presented a robot tour guide designed in the likeness of King Tutankhamun, intended to introduce museum visitors to Egyptian antiquities. Hendy presented him with a laptop and several robotics kits.

The exception places Mina in a programme normally intended for students aged 12 to 17. As a fourth-grade pupil, he would typically fall under the Digital Egypt Marvels initiative, which targets students in grades four through six.

Digital Egypt Cubs offers advanced training tracks including robotics and embedded systems, artificial intelligence and data science, cybersecurity, web development and digital arts. According to the ministry, the Cubs and Marvels initiatives had trained around 240,000 pupils nationwide by May 2026.