This 12-year-old Nigerian girl built a robot that folds clothes in three seconds
Do you still worry about the tediousness of folding your clothes after weekend laundry? A 12-year-old Nigerian girl, Fathia Abdullahi, has invented a fascinating robot to solve your problem.
According to Face to Face Africa, Abdullahi began taking coding lessons when she was 11 and after 12 months, she has used her coding skills to build a clothes-folding robot.
“This is the T-shirt folder. I made it because there are too much clothes to fold on Saturdays and Sundays when you wash a lot,” she told Reuters.
The prototype robot was built using “pins, some beams, and EV3 brick and it automatically folds the T-shirt once it’s laid out on the ingenious invention.
Meanwhile, Google has partnered a Nigerian foundation, Coderina Education and Technology Foundation to establish code clubs in over 100 schools and community centers.
The Google program created by educators and computer scientists targets children aged nine to 16 years. It introduces coding and computer science to students in a collaborative and creative club environment to emulate the ingenuity of the likes of Abdullahi.
Over 3000 youth are expected to be trained across Nigeria.
Google head of brand and reputation, Sub-Saharan Africa Mojolaoluwa Aderemi-Makinde, believed the training would improve the children’s confidence in interacting with computers as well as their overall confidence and willingness to try new things.
“With growing internet penetration across Africa and the increasing trend of kids interacting online, Google believes it is important to provide helpful information to children and parents to enable them to take appropriate measures to stay safe online.
“The training takes learnings from Google’s Be Internet Awesome campaign and the content is carefully drafted to provide helpful tips to kids and parents, and information on useful tools like Google’s Family Link,” she said.
Last year, the Nigerian Federal Government began moves to change the country’s curriculum to allow pre-primary school pupils to be taught software development and coding.
The move, Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo said was necessary because youth who are not Information and Communications Technology or (ICT) compliant would become unemployable in the future.
“One of the most important features of that human capital development plan is Science Technology, Engineering Arts and Mathematics (STEAM) education. The focus is on employability skills from basic learning in primary school up to tertiary education,” he said.
