Mathematics Competitions 

As a response to the East African mathematical community request, a regional mathematical competition was created in early 2023: EAMO. The countries involved had already close collaborations in education and research, quite similar secondary school curriculum and common needs of popularising the subject among the school students. Considering the mathematics as an obvious introduction to STEM subjects and math competitions as a reliable way of identifying young talents, the East African mathematical community strongly recommended creating such regional competition. Not all countries already had local, national activities of this kind, so for several of them was it a natural way to introduce the local competition as a natural ground of picking a team for the EAMO, or, in the future, for PAMO and IMO. 

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The first EAMO took place in April 2023 with the central hub in Kigali. The competition was online while the coordination was directed from Kigali. Each invited country (Sudan, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and Zambia) was represented by a team of seven students, at least 3 of each gender. Unfortunately Sudan couldn’t participate due to the political unrest. The coordination was done with an online help of several European mathematicians.

The competition itself was a success, very appreciated by the local organizers and students. The overall winner was Erika Oduor from Kenya.

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The second EAMO took place in April 2024, with Nairobi as the main hub. The setting was similar to the 2024 event, but enlarged to a parallel Junior competition (5 participants per country, at least 2 of each gender).

 

Both competitions were sponsored by Global Talent Fund and Jane Street.

 

The third EAMO in 2025 is planed in a similar way, with Kigali as main hub again. This time however we plan for a more local engagement in coordination work. To this end we started a project Mathematical Competitions in Developing Countries, aiming in training of African coaches in the secrets of mathematical competitions, techniques and tricks of problem-solving. In the future, we aim in having EAMO on-site instead of on-line. This however depends only on the generosity of donors.