Arfa Karim Randhawa certified with Microsoft at nine and remains one of Pakistan’s most recognized names in technology.
There is a seventeen-story building on Ferozepur Road in Lahore, Pakistan that most of the country’s technology sector has passed through at some point. It houses the Punjab Information Technology Board and the Information Technology University. It is the tallest structure on that stretch of road, and for years it was the first facility of its kind in Pakistan built to international standard.
It is named after a girl who died at sixteen.
Arfa Karim Randhawa was nine years old when she passed a professional certification examination that most people attempt in their twenties, after a degree and a first job. She was ten when Bill Gates invited her to Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond. She was eleven when she stood at an international developers conference in Barcelona as the only Pakistani among five thousand attendees.
The sequence is short enough to read in a single paragraph, which is part of why the story has held. Pakistan has produced other prodigies and other technology successes. What set this one apart was the timing and the place. In 2004, the country’s information technology sector was still finding its footing, and the assumption about who would represent it internationally did not include a schoolgirl from a village in the Faisalabad district.
Arfa Karim’s Microsoft Certification at Age Nine
Arfa Abdul Karim Randhawa was born on February 2, 1995, in Chak No. 4JB Ram Diwali, a village in the Faisalabad district of Punjab. She was educated at Lahore Grammar School.
In 2004, at the age of nine, she passed the Microsoft Certified Professional examination. The credential tests working knowledge of the company’s systems and is ordinarily pursued by adults entering the information technology profession. She completed it while still in primary school.
The achievement made her the youngest MCP in the world and earned her recognition in Guinness World Records. She held the distinction from 2004 until 2008, when it passed to another candidate. The record has since moved again.
Meeting Bill Gates and the TechEd Barcelona Keynote
In 2005, at the age of ten, Arfa traveled to Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington, at the invitation of Bill Gates. S. Somasegar, then corporate vice president of the company’s software development division, wrote about the visit publicly at the time.
She returned to Pakistan to extensive coverage in national television and print media.
In November 2006, Microsoft invited her to take part in the keynote session of the TechEd Developers conference in Barcelona. She was the only Pakistani delegate among more than five thousand developers attending.
National recognition followed. She received the Fatima Jinnah Gold Medal in the field of science and technology, and the Salaam Pakistan Youth Award in August 2005. In the same year she was awarded the President’s Award for Pride of Performance by then President Pervez Musharraf, becoming the youngest person to receive the honor.
Arfa Software Technology Park and the Arfa Karim Foundation
Arfa suffered an epileptic seizure followed by cardiac arrest on December 22, 2011. She was admitted to the Combined Military Hospital in Lahore and remained in a coma.
Bill Gates contacted her family during her hospitalization. He offered to cover the cost of her medical care and proposed transferring her to the United States for treatment. Her father, Lieutenant Colonel Amjad Abdul Karim Randhawa, confirmed at the time that Microsoft had discussed arrangements to fly her abroad.
Her condition showed brief signs of improvement, and she died the following day, on January 14, 2012, at the age of sixteen.
Her funeral was attended by then Chief Minister of Punjab Shahbaz Sharif, and she was buried in her family’s village in the Faisalabad district.
The day after her funeral, the Chief Minister announced that the Lahore Technology Park, then nearing completion on Ferozepur Road, would be renamed in her honor. It became Arfa Software Technology Park.
The Arfa Karim Foundation maintains a permanent secretariat within the building. A computer laboratory at the Government College of Commerce has also been named after her. Her family has said that she intended to establish a school for children who could not otherwise afford an education, and that her father planned to pursue the project.
