Gambia Youth at Robotics Competition After Denied Visa

Like the team from Afghanistan, the Gambia team competing in the international competition being held in the United States was denied visas when they first applied.

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"Having no hope to come, we still worked," the team's captain, 18-year-old Alieu Bah, said to NPR. "We never give up, no matter how hard the condition is. That's how we pushed and pushed and pushed until we finally reapplied and got our visa, and here we are now."

The high school team from Gambia, two girls and three boys, are now attending the First Global robotics event in Washington, D.C., along with some 156 national teams.

Gambia is a Muslim majority country, but it is not on the U.S.’s travel ban, which was introduced by President Donald Trump.

Fatoumata Ceesay, one of the students told Al Jazeera that although she and her peers weren’t told the reason behind the reversal of the decision, the second interview with the U.S. embassy differed markedly from the first one.

"It was very nice and sensible compared with the last one," 17-year-old Ceesay said. “The questions were related to the robotics. We had an interesting conversation and they were friendly."

This year's robotics challenge focused on "water issues." The Gambian team's robot, a cube-shaped device about the size of a large microwave, is designed to clean contaminated rivers.

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"We didn't have anyone to help us with the design," Khadijatou Gassama said in the NPR interview, adding that the team learned how to make their robot by watching videos and following a guide provided by First Global.

Gambia still has a gender gap in Stem subjects (science, technology, engineering and maths). As of 2011, about 20 percent of the country's researchers are female, according to a UNESCO report.

Gassama hopes she and Ceesay will inspire other Gambian girls to become interested in technology and help find solutions to some of Gambia's long-standing problems.

"That is why more girls should get involved in this kind of stuff, because it's really, really important," Gassama said. "We want to build our nation, to make it a better place to live."