Gaza’s Young Developers Turn to Technology to Tackle Everyday Wartime Struggles

In a modest workspace inside the Taqat Gaza co-working hub, 23-year-old programmer Saja al Ghoul focused intently on refining her latest mobile application, a project designed to address one of Gaza’s growing daily challenges: transportation.

As war and economic hardship continue to reshape life across the Gaza Strip, young developers like Saja are using technology to create practical solutions for problems affecting ordinary Palestinians. From ride sharing services to lost item recovery platforms, Gaza’s battered tech sector is slowly adapting to survive under extraordinary conditions.

Saja’s application, called “Waselni,” which translates to “help me reach my destination,” aims to reduce transportation costs by allowing users travelling in the same direction to share rides and split expenses.

“Anyone can propose a trip, for example, from al Shifa area to as Saraya in central Gaza City at 8am, and then other people can join the same ride and split the cost,” Saja explained.

The app also features a prepaid electronic wallet system intended to help users bypass Gaza’s worsening cash shortage, a crisis intensified by months of war and economic disruption.

Across the same workspace, 26-year-old information systems graduate Bahaa al Mallahi has been developing another solution inspired by the realities of displacement and loss.

His platform, named “Rajja’li,” meaning “return it to me,” is designed to help people recover missing belongings that were lost during evacuations and repeated displacement.

“People lost almost everything during displacement,” Bahaa said. “Personal belongings, official papers, phones, bags … Sometimes, things with little financial value but immense importance to their owners.”

The idea emerged after Bahaa noticed social media becoming overwhelmed with posts from residents searching for lost possessions.

“If you find something, you post it on the platform. If you lose something, you search for it there,” Bahaa explained.

He said the project could eventually expand to help locate missing children, an increasingly common issue in overcrowded shelters and displacement camps.

“Every day we see announcements about missing children,” Bahaa said. “Because of life in tents and the breakdown of communication, finding children and reconnecting them with their families is difficult.”

“If a child goes missing in a specific area, an instant notification could be sent to nearby users containing the child’s photo and description,” he said.

Despite the promise of such ideas, developers in Gaza face significant obstacles beyond simply creating the software.

Saja acknowledged that her transportation app will only succeed if enough people actively use it. She believes support from local authorities could help increase public trust and verify drivers using the platform.

Bahaa, meanwhile, said his lost and found service would require cooperation from official institutions if residents are to trust the platform with sensitive items like identification documents.

Financial pressures are also growing. Many modern applications depend on paid artificial intelligence services and cloud tools, costs that have become increasingly difficult for Gaza’s young programmers to manage.

“We need AI subscriptions, and these are extremely expensive,” Bahaa said. “Even basic services have become paid, and prices keep rising.”

Before the war, Bahaa worked as a network engineer for a local internet company, but he lost his job after the conflict began. Attempts to secure remote work opportunities abroad were largely unsuccessful.

“Today, internet and electricity have become luxuries,” he said.

He also described the burden of relying on co-working spaces for stable internet and electricity access.

“You pay hundreds of shekels per month just to have a place with electricity and internet,” he said.

At the centre of these efforts is engineer Sharif Naeem, founder and CEO of Taqat Gaza, a co-working initiative created to support remote workers and freelancers after much of Gaza’s infrastructure was damaged during the war.

“Taqat was fundamentally a response to a real problem facing remote workers in Gaza: the absence of safe places with electricity and internet,” Naeem said.

According to Naeem, thousands of programmers and freelancers lost jobs or international contracts after communications networks and electricity systems were severely disrupted.

“Our first goal was very simple: how do we get people back to work?” he said.

What began as a small workspace eventually expanded into multiple locations across Gaza, including centres in Nuseirat and Deir el Balah. By early 2025, Taqat Gaza had established its main headquarters in Gaza City, supporting roughly 250 freelancers and programmers.

Over time, however, Naeem said the organisation realised the crisis facing Gaza’s tech sector extended beyond damaged infrastructure.

“We discovered that the war created a huge knowledge gap,” Naeem said. “The tech world advanced rapidly over the past two years while young people in Gaza were busy trying to survive.”

He explained that many developers returning to work found themselves disconnected from rapidly changing international technology trends, especially in artificial intelligence and software development.

“We began focusing on training programmes that bridge the gap between market needs and the capabilities available among youth here,” he said.

Taqat Gaza has since evolved into both a co-working hub and a training centre, partnering with universities and institutions to help young developers improve technical skills and launch projects addressing everyday problems inside Gaza.

“The youth here are not building fantasy projects,” Naeem said. “They are building solutions for problems they experience every day.”

Still, major challenges remain. Developers continue to face unstable electricity, unreliable internet access, expensive software subscriptions, and limited access to international markets.

Despite these difficulties, Naeem believes Gaza’s technology sector still holds significant potential for recovery.

“We have tremendous human potential,” he said. “The problem is not a lack of talent, but a lack of genuine investment in that talent.”