Marwan Al Hakimi

Yemen

Every day, Marwan Al Hakimi stands witness to landmine-free the fields of Yemen.

When Marwan says, “Coding has changed my life”, he repeats it more than once with persistence. They are more than just words to Marwan and his family.

Coming from studying languages and translation, he takes us back in his story to the launch of the One Million Arab Coders initiative in 2017. Marwan remembers the date well when he read about it on Twitter. He continues, “His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Rashid spoke with us, we who look at our future may think it is lost, forgetting it is in our hands –we make it and sculpt it”.

Marwan completed his coding courses and developed more than seven free mobile applications to learn and make language available on app stores. Despite the applications’ success, Marwan’s triumph was just beginning.

Two years ago, a more urgent cause demanded his attention.

“Every landmine that was planted in my country, was planted in my heart and the hearts of many,” he says. “But how can I help? I thought about my abilities and skills, opened my computer and began to develop an application.”

He created a mobile application that detects landmines planted around his country and he vowed that he would free the world of this deadly invention.

His application, which links map coordinates with mined areas, warns passers-by of the dangerous areas and notifies the police. Marwan’s application has helped comb and clean more than three Yemeni areas, rescuing hundreds of lives, and saving countless more from deformation or permanent disability. And for this impactful digital invention, he won the $50,000 competition prize for the One Million Arab Coders initiative alumni.