Constitution App

Quite the Twitter celebrity, Mina Fayek has been blogging about Egypt's social, political and economic spheres for some time now, and has been one of the many outspoken activists since the 2011 revolution. However, he's a computer science graduate, and that part of him has seemingly never left him, and over the past year or so, he's been teaching himself development for Android. His latest project has just been released, and we're sure it's going to be a hit. Thanks to his work, Android users can now download a portable, easy to read copy of the proposed consititution so we can all familiarise ourselves with it ahead of the impending referendum. We caught up with Fayek to thank him for his genius and find out more:

How did the idea of creating this app come about?

I started Android development about a year ago, just watching a couple of tutorials. After that I started my virtual company (JMD Labs) with some of my friends beside my career as a web developer. We develop everything from websites to android and iPhone apps to Windows applications. So far we've developed five major apps and websites in various fields.

Of course. the referendum date is approaching, and when I heard the date was set, I challenged myself to finish this app as early as possible so people would get to read the draft before the vote. It took me around three weeks and was done development two weeks before referendum date. My friend, who is an iPhone developer, and a member of our virtual company, has started working on a similar app for iPhone. We're also planning enhancing the apps to support multi-screen sizes for tablets. We might add other constitutions in the future as well.

What benefits does the mobile app have vis a vis just reading the constitution online?

It's portable, you can take on your phone, read it offline, anywhere! It also comes with a search feature, font sizing and copying text. Also, it provides Arabic and English (provided by The Cairo Post) text in one place. 

How many downloads have you had so far and what has the feedback been like?

Google takes some time before it gives the developer statistics and feedback. Right now I'm only getting feedback from social media and people love it. Frankly, I didn't see these comments coming!

What advice do you gave to the average Egyptian going into the referendum?

Read, compare, search, listen... The constitution is the manual we agree to live with each other based on its rules, so everyone should be quite aware of these rules. Not only before voting yes or no, but most importantly, in case it passed, to watch if the government and officials abide by what the people have agreed on in the constitution. 

You can download Egypt’s Constitution App for Android here.