Omar Ahmed

Omar, a 17-year-old Egyptian student and self-taught edtech innovator, is transforming the future of learning across the Arab world ​​– one short video at a time. Having struggled with social media addiction and limited Arabic-language programming resources, he turned those challenges into the driving force behind Horas Code, a viral TikTok account delivering free, accessible, Arabic-language coding education. Horas Code now has over 150,000 followers and has attracted more than 6 million unique viewers across 12+ countries.

Omar’s passion was first sparked at age 10 by a teacher who showed him how tilting a square turns it into a rhombus. That moment showed him the power of great education to make something “click”. Today, Omar is on a mission to create those “aha” moments for others – especially under-served learners in the MENA region.

Now a top student at Egypt’s prestigious Obour STEM School, Omar ranks second in his class with a 3.98 GPA. As a student researcher, he has developed an award-winning language-agnostic AI tool for early detection of dementia through speech analysis, earning a Gold Medal at Egypt’s International Science & Technology Fair and placing among the top 10 projects at an IEEE conference. Another research project of Omar’s – smart augmented reality (AR) glasses for deaf people – was accepted to Nile University’s Undergraduate Research Forum, the biggest national research forum for high school and university undergraduate students in Egypt.

Beyond the lab, Omar leads real change in his school community. As president of the Mentorship Obour STEM Programme (MOSP), he has helped guide 130 younger students through academic and mental health challenges, providing personal support and improving student success and wellbeing. Next year, he will serve as the programme’s advisory head, training the next generation of student mentors.

In addition, Omar has created an “Introduction to Python” course for Beecell, a leading digital media company (over 300 million users in 20 countries) whose Mawaheb platform offers affordable programming education to youth across the MENA region. He was also the first-ever TikTok brand collaborator with Manara, a Silicon Valley-based training platform helping talented people from the MENA region to prepare for jobs at companies like Google and Meta.

If Omar wins the Global Student Prize, his next mission will be to build an evidence-based EdTech platform for students with ADHD and short attention spans, featuring short-form lessons, spaced repetition, and a “score” system to help consolidate learning. Inspired by his own struggles and those of others, the platform aims to make education more equitable and accessible for students often overlooked by traditional systems.