The Children Who Had Never Left Home Are Back to Change the World

An hour earlier, on the western edge of Africa, in the island nation of São Tomé and Príncipe, Carlos and Silvio buckled up in silence after their families danced and cried on the road to the airport. They come from disadvantaged schools with no computer rooms. They were able to learn robotics this year because WRO National Organizer Manuela Costeira opened the STEAM space she had built in her Portuguese school and convinced the Ministry of Education to let all students from the island nation’s public schools use it. The boys trained twice a week, competed, won their national competition, and suddenly found themselves flying to the other side of the world.

For the majority of 50 African teams from 14 countries travelling to Singapore this year, several extraordinary firsts converged in one D-Day: holding a passport, leaving their country, and representing their country on a global robotics stage.

What an emotional journey, and not just in Mozambique, where drama unfolded in real time. Only the national winners were ‘supposed’ to travel to Singapore. But when judges called back the second-place team ‘because of a possible mistake,’ fear swept across their faces. Then the Irish Ambassador Patrick Empey, lifted a second giant boarding pass. ‘You too are going to Singapore.’ The tears came like rivers.

In Zimbabwe, Minister Tatenda Mavetera captured the heart of partnership during the send-off ceremony. She thanked National Organizer Victoria Nxumalo “for being true to her word.” Victoria had once walked into the Ministry with a bold vision. Backed by the continental partnership with Google and ECA, she wanted to equip young Zimbabweans with digital skills, AI fluency, and robotics training. Because robotics lights up everything in a child’s learning circuitry. Critical thinking. Collaboration. Creativity. Spatial reasoning. Resilience. Often all at once.

An MoU soon followed. Her team delivered. One hundred and fifty teachers were upskilled, because “educators cannot teach what they do not know.” Five thousand learners trained later, Zimbabwe is now preparing to introduce AI learning from the earliest grades.

In Uganda, a country where one doctor serves 25,000 patients, three twelve-year-olds with barely months into coding designed a solar-powered medical assistant that reads vital signs and identifies illnesses even off-grid. After two national wins, Namwanje, Lukooba and Nsimbe travelled with Doctor 247 to Singapore and are now preparing for pilot testing with the Ministries of Health and Science.

São Tomé’s Blue Cane, built by Carlos and Silvio, is a smart cane built with the eyes of the heart. Affordable, local and scalable, it is about to be distributed to visually impaired people in their community.

Meanwhile, far to the south, three girls were dreaming up a way to make food grow where climate change has left the earth hungry. Their Green Thumb Project is a solar-powered autonomous greenhouse that grows nutrient-dense food affordably for schools, small farmers and families in need. A blueprint for climate-smart agriculture ready to spread across Africa.

A few hundred kilometers east, Daniel and Malen designed the perfect farmer’s ally, able to lift entire harvests in Mozambique. Agrobot autonomously plants, waters, and tills soil where drought has drained the land – saving time, protecting tired hands, and helping bring life back to fading fields. 

Francophone Africa made a remarkable debut this year, with Senegal joining the World Robot Olympiad for the first time. Thanks to the support of the Endeavour Foundation and the ACCEENT nonprofit, 2,000 Senegalese youth were able to participate, marking the country’s entry into the continental robotics movement and opening the door for thousands more to access STEM opportunities in the years ahead.

WRO Senegal’s winning team set out to solve one of the country’s most persistent challenges: the isolation of rural communities from essential services. Their solution is a digital airbridge, a real-time semi-autonomous drone delivery system that moves vital goods across long distances. By connecting remote villages with urban centers, the project reflects a vision for inclusive development, creating jobs, reducing poverty, and empowering vulnerable groups to harness AI technology.

There was another quiet rise worth noting: the surge of all-girls teams building with purpose. In Zimbabwe, Lereko, Mosa and Mpolokeng brought Vigil One to life: a $300 solar-powered AI anti-poaching system already protecting 7,500 hectares and projected to reduce poaching by 70 percent. Their bot detects threats with 95 percent accuracy, alerts rangers in two seconds. Three times cheaper than drones, it is ready to scale across more than 100 African reserves.

Speaking of girls in STEAM, the Nigerian delegation spoke volumes. Out of the fourteen teams that flew out from Lagos, most were girls. Anywhere else, this might be a footnote. On a continent where girls still face systemic barriers to education, even more so since the COVID crisis, this is a turning point – driven by female educators themselves.

Seventy-five percent of WRO National Organizers in Africa are women who fully weigh the power of a role model for African girls, and it is far reaching. Girls stay in school when they see a woman leading. Girls pursue the STEAM path when they see a woman building. Girls dream bigger when they see a woman making decisions that matter. Girls land in Singapore because a woman believed in them.

Research concurs: when girls have a woman role model in STEM, they are 2 to 3 times more likely to pursue science, they stay in school longer, develop stronger leadership skills, and outperform peers in problem-solving. ¹