Nearly 800k first-year secondary students joined Egypt’s Japanese-built school coding platform in 2025/26, and the country pays only to host it, Hany Helal, secretary-general of the Egyptian-Japanese Education Partnership, tells EnterpriseAM. Without putting an exact price on the ministry’s hosting fees, Helal calls them very limited, adding that the content came at no cost because Egyptian and Japanese specialists adapted it into Arabic together. Sprix, the Tokyo-listed company behind the platform, now names its Egypt project among the drivers of its sales growth.

A year earlier, Egypt barely registered on Sprix’s books. In the nine months to June 2025, overseas businesses (including Tofas, its international academic skills test) contributed almost nothing to the company’s Other segment, which booked JPY 2.89 bn in sales, Sprix said in its 3Q FY 2025 presentation (pdf). Its 3Q FY 2026 presentation (pdf) named “the growth of the Egypt Tofas project” among the drivers of a 12.6% rise in the segment’s sales to JPY 3.26 bn.

Helal says Egypt’s scale brings Sprix large earnings. Egypt is now the platform’s largest user worldwide, “making it easier to market the project elsewhere,” he tells us. Sprix invested in translating and developing the platform, and Egypt has arrangements to take a share of the revenue from the Arabic version once it launches in other Arab markets, Helal explains.

Signing up is optional, and the partnership had initially expected 200k-300k students to join, Helal says. The first-year secondary cohort numbered about 830k, and around 600k of them passed the term-one exam, Education Minister Mohamed Abdel Latif told parliament in May, Maspero reported.

Sprix supplies the course under a comprehensive contract it signed with the ministry in Cairo in September 2025. Sprix said the contract commits to providing Arabic and English textbooks, training teachers, putting students on its Qureo platform to learn JavaScript, and assessing their progress through the Tofas exam. Neither the ministry nor Sprix has made the contract’s value public.

Students who pass Tofas earn a certificate accredited by the ministry, Hiroshima University, and Sprix, under the three-way MoU Abdel Latif signed in Japan in October 2025, according to a ministry statement. An earlier MoU from August 2025 covers a math version of Tofas, which Sprix agreed to run regularly for primary and secondary students nationwide on a paid basis, the company said in a statement. In its 2025 full-year presentation (pdf), Sprix said it would work with the ministry to “advance monetization initiatives for Tofas.”

Qureo runs on self-study, built around graded modules and tests that check what students have understood, Helal says. Algorithmics Egypt, the local franchise of coding school Algorithmics Global, reviewed the course content and has observed that “some theoretical concepts benefit from additional guidance when students move to digital and practical activities,” CEO Ahmed Eid Said tells us. Said welcomes Tofas but says a certificate carries more weight when students can show hands-on skills to back it up. Rolling the course out nationwide also brings challenges, he adds, particularly “the need for qualified instructors and adequate technical infrastructure.” Helal sees internet problems as temporary, saying they haven’t held students back.

Two schools are paying for a coding pilot on top of the ministry’s course. Saint Vincent de Paul College and Madinaty Integrated Language School launched the secondary pilot with Algorithmics in 2026/27, Said says. About 100 students there take project-based lessons in Python, web development, and AI to complement the official curriculum while studying the ministry’s course on Qureo at home, he adds. The pilot is Algorithmics’ first move into secondary schools after five years working mainly with primary schools, and Said credits the ministry’s course with raising interest among the company’s six partner schools.

For now, the two schools cover the pilot’s out-of-pocket expenses while Algorithmics works out what to charge, Said says. The company supplies the instructors and digital coding labs, and “we are keeping implementation costs as low as practicable,” he adds. Algorithmics won’t disclose the financial terms of its school agreements and hopes to build a longer-term partnership with the schools if the pilot succeeds.

The course is expanding to technical schools in 2026/27, with Azhar institutes next. The ministry said on 26 August that it had decided to take the course to both technical schools and applied technology schools. It said the course’s first year led to 85 students securing training placements at international companies, with 10 more set to travel to Japan for training programs. On 4 September, Abdel Latif said the course would teach Python alongside JavaScript from 12 September. The Cabinet has approved opening the platform to students at Azhar institutes, and the move will come soon, Helal says.

What’s next: Sprix is scheduled to report its FY 2026 results on 13 November, according to Japanese market data site Kabutan. Egypt and Japan are moving to a strategic dialogue on education, with the education and higher education ministers set to take part in meetings in Tokyo in January, Helal says.

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