Egypt is taking part in the 27th International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI), an annual programming competition for secondary school students, held from July 26 until August 2 in Almaty, Kazakhstan.
On each competition day, contestants will be given three tasks to complete in five hours. A two-hour Practice Competition prior to the first competition day is scheduled to familiarize all contestants with the grading system. The contest consists of computer programming, solving problems of an algorithmic nature.
Students at the IOI compete on an individual basis, with up to four students competing from each participating country (with 81 countries in 2012). Students in the national teams are selected through national computing contests, such as the Australian Informatics Olympiad, British Informatics Olympiad and Bundeswettbewerb Informatik of Germany.
Held in 1989 in Pravetz, Bulgaria for the first time, the International Olympiad in Informatics is one of the most prestigious computer science competitions in the world with UNESCO and IFIP being patrons.
The Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) has been ardent to support and sponsor the participation of Egypt at the IOI.
A training camp has been held during the period of May 28 – June 27 for a number of 20 students who won the Egyptian Olympiad in Informatics, held last April.
This is in addition to holding two other training camps during the period of July 1-24. The number of finalists, who were chosen based on a number of exams to represent Egypt, are four students. They are Yousef Ibrahim Salama, Ahmed Mohamed Morsi, Nuran Abdul Aziz Abu Hatab and Moaz Fathi El Defrawi.
Egypt has been taking part in the IOI since 2005 and hosted the competition in 2008. Over the years of participation, it received a number of silver and bronze medals, contributing to the provision of job opportunities for participants in the world's largest information technology companies.
