Shafay Thobani 8-year-old world’s youngest IT expert

Shafay Thobani, an eight-year-old Pakistani boy, has won the honour of being the world’s youngest Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist, popular private news TV channel Geo reported. Born on March 13, 2004, Thobani grew interested in computers ever since he was a baby. On April 9, 2012, Thobani appeared in the Prometric test and secured 91 per cent marks, thus making him the world’s youngest Microsoft Certified Training Specialist (MCTS) at the age of eight years and 24 days. The boy is certified professional in Microsoft Windows 7 Configuration and Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2. Before appearing in the exam, he remained under training of Microsoft certified trainers for 13 months. His trainer Faisal Durrani said it was a challenge for him to teach complicated concepts such as Domain Name System (DNS) and Internet Protocol (IP) address to a child as young as Thobani. “So we split the 40-hour course designed for grown-up IT specialists into 13 months for the child. We taught him by giving him easy examples in order to grasp the concepts. Teaching him for three to four hours everyday, we would also allow him breaks to let him be the normal kid that he is, swimming, playing football or rollerblading,” Durrani said. Speaking of the boy’s main areas of interest, Thobani’s father Dr Shah said he liked network and communication programming. “He has already completed 65 per cent of Microsoft Hyper-V virtualisation, too,” he added. “Shafay was born in 2004, the same year Arfa was declared the world’s youngest Microsoft Certified Professional at the age of nine. Arfa was an inspiration for us and I hope that Shafay, too, would be a role model for more children to show their tremendous achievements,” Shah said. Shafay said he was proud of himself and he would work for Pakistan in any way possible.