Arab Organization for Industrialization

The Arab Organization for Industrialization (AOI) (Arabic: الهيئة العربية للتصنيع) is an Egypt-based Arab military organization established in 1975 by Egypt, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Qatar to supervise the collective development of the Arab defense industry. Following a gradual deterioration in relations between the AOI member-states, Egypt became sole owner of AOI in 1993. As well as meeting the requirements of the Egyptian military, AOI directs spare capacity to civilian programmes, including civilian transport and sanitation equipment; additionally, AOI has stated its intention of entering the wind power sector.^[2]

Initially an institution of Pan-Arabism, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates returned their shares in AOI, valued at US$1.8 billion, to Egypt in 1993, leaving AOI wholly owned by Egypt. AOI has approximately 16,000 employees,^[1] out of which 1,250 are engineers. AOI fully owns 12 factories and shares in 1 joint-venture, besides the Arab Institute for Development Technology.