“I love to be online and I love to program and that is why I started to develop my own website,” said Radwan at his Maadi – a Cairo suburb – flat, turning to the laptop on the table near his bed. “That’s for watching my favorite TV shows,” he added with a grin.
What is so shocking is the fact that Radwan is not a highly educated new Egyptian activist using the Internet for talking politics or human rights; instead he is an 11-year-old Middle School student who has found his calling with the Internet.
“What I do is fun and maybe one day it will be my job, but right now I just love to design and fake blogging. I am not allowed to publish, my parents say I am not old enough yet,” he continued.
As Egypt continues to push through on developing the country following the removal of three decades of dictatorship under former President Hosni Mubarak and struggles to come to terms with military rule, the youth of Radwan’s generation have found the Internet and are attacking it with ease.
According to Radwan, at least three of his friends have developed, designed and published websites. He said they are mostly about sports, or school things, but the fact that they are creating and innovating at such a young age was almost unheard of in Egypt a decade ago.
Then, there were only a handful of blogs running in the country, and those focused on the political meanderings of the former regime. In 2004, that number began to rise, reaching nearly 1 000, but then in 2005 it took off.
Then, the beginnings of the protest movement came into force, with journalists and activists being attacked by the now-infamous plainclothes police officers. Bloggers posted images of the attacks, videos of sexual harassment and spoke out against the government.
Six years later, those beginnings would manifest themselves into the 18-days of street demonstrations that ousted a leader and an entrenched government.
Still, politics aside, this younger, educated generation of Egyptian youth is carrying the future of the country, said IT expert and longtime Egyptian observer Joseph Williams, a British researcher, who is developing a training program he hopes to submit to the Egyptian government by the year’s end in order to promote technology in schools.
“What we are seeing right now is the future of Egypt on so many levels. With young kids getting involved at an early age with the Internet and gaining these skills, they will be able to compete on the global stage in the years to come,” he said.
And this is exactly what Radwan and his group of friends hopes to achieve. They said they want to have better jobs than their parents and do the things they love to do. “I love this stuff, it is fun. So why not do it forever,” he added.
By Desmond Shephard
