The Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA), in cooperation with the National Telecommunication Institute (NTI), held a graduation ceremony for the 2026 class of its summer training program for university students, which brought together 10,485 male and female students from 27 governorates. The ceremony took place at ITIDA's headquarters in Smart Village, attended by senior officials from the agency and the institute.

The ceremony honoured the top graduates and handed out certificates of appreciation. It also recognised 44 trainees who earned the Fortinet cybersecurity certificate, the students who secured freelance work, and the three best graduation projects.

The program is part of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology's efforts to build digital capabilities and is the largest in Egypt by number of university-student trainees. This year's edition drew more than 40,000 applicants in less than a week of registration opening.

The program provides specialised training that combines technical skills with job-market, freelancing and soft skills, and includes eight technology tracks with more than 26 training courses. Each trainee receives 120 training hours: 90 hours of specialised technical training and 30 hours of soft-skills or freelancing training.

The program ran for the second year in a row. This year, completion certificates required either an applied graduation project published on GitHub or a training certificate from one of the international academies. A total of 3,807 participants enrolled in programs offered by international academies run by global companies, including Amazon Web Services, Cisco, Fortinet, Huawei and Red Hat.

The program gave trainees the option of continuing and deepening the same specialisation the following year or moving to another technology track to shape their future path. Around 1,200 trainees chose to continue their track and move on to advanced levels.

The program also included a tour of Smart Village for the top graduates, who visited the offices of global and local companies, including Vodafone Intelligent Solutions and valU, to learn about work environments and the nature of jobs in the sector.