Egypt is hosting the 20th round of International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) due from August 16–23 under the auspices of President Hosni Mubarak.
The event, to be organized by Egypt for the first time, will be held at Mubarak City for Scientific Research and Technology Applications in 6th of October Governorate.
The event is organized by Ministry of Communications and Information Technology in cooperation with the Ministries of Education, Interior, Civil Aviation, Tourism and Higher Education and Scientific Research and Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transport.
Minister of Communications and Information Technology and Chairman of Supreme Committee of Olympiad Dr. Tarek Kamel said Egypt is the only Arab and African country honored with organizing the international event.
Dr. Kamel added that all required preparations have been finalized for hosting the contest, which is one of the biggest specialized official competition on informatics worldwide.
Senior Advisor to Minister of Communications and IT for Human Resources and Training Dr. Ekram Fathy noted that the contest venue was equipped with 450 computers and communications networks. Advanced testing, evaluation and results programs were also made available, added Ekram.
A total of 320 contestants aged between 12–20 years representing 80 countries are taking part in the contest, which marks the highest ever participation in the history of IOI.
Each country is taking part with a 4-member team, all qualified and trained on IT skills. Egypt is the only country participating with two teams, a privilege that is only given to the hosting country.
Each participating team is being supervised by a group of technology and software programming experts from international software companies as well as university professors.
The event opening and closing ceremonies are due to be held at Cairo Opera House. Besides the competition’s proceedings, the eight-day event includes entertainment activities, trips and tours inside Egypt's historical sites and cultural venues.
IOI is an annual international informatics competition for youngsters in one of the member states in the International Informatics Committee. The competition tasks are of algorithmic nature. Contestants, however, have to show basic IT skills like problem analysis, designing algorithms and data structures, programming and testing.
The idea of IOI was first introduced during the 24th General Conference of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in Paris by the Bulgarian delegate Professor Bojidar Sendov in October 1987. In 1989, the first IOI was held in Bulgaria to become an event hosted annually by a different country.
