The Arab Olympiad in Informatics (AOI) is a major national and Arab event. The Origin of the AOI is the Arab Academy for Science and Technology, who is -as well- sponsoring the first of these events between 1 and 7 July 2002.
The AOI consists of several contests among the high school and first year university students. Students compete in solving some real live problems using computer algorithms techniques.
The AOI was inspired from the previous contests in the same field that took place in several countries, e.g. Finland , China etc. The Arab Academy for Science and Technology participated in several such events over the years. This finally led to the idea of organizing a national contest in the same sense in the Arab region.
Informatics contests draw increasing attention in the last few years due to the need of preparing a new generation of students that are not just good users of technology but creative in the field as well.