7 Member Team to Represent Ghana At Global Robotics Competition in the U.S.

By Julius Yao Petetsi

An all girls seven-member team will represent Ghana at this year's First Global Robotics competition in México City, United States of America, from August 15 to August 18, 2018.

The yearly international robotics challenge is aimed at whipping up interests for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) in youth across the world.

Made up of students from Cape Coast based Wesley Girls Senior High School, the Ghanaian team is supported by STEMbees, a Ghanaian organisation that mentors and engages primary and secondary school girls in STEM activities.

Coming on the back of placing 66 out of 163 teams from 157 countries in the 2017 edition, Ghana's representative are hoping to do better from 166 teams drawn from 155 countries.

During the competition, the various teams are expected to demonstrate their technological prowess with their self-made robots that are controlled by applications they have developed themselves.

In a meeting with the Communications Minister, Mrs. Ursula Owusu-Ekuful in Accra on Friday ahead of their departure, leader of delegation and Co-Founder of STEMbees, Linda Ansong said they hope to make Ghana proud at the event.

"Our goal is to lead an organisation that produces the Mark Zuckerberg (Founder of Facebook) but if not that, at least have a lot of girls knowing that they have the ability to excel in these fields (of STEM) because there is this perception that these fields are for men so girls are not pushed to those fields," Ms. Ansong told the minister.

Mrs. Owusu-Ekuful, congratulating the girls even before they departed said government was fully behind them and wished them well pledging a US$5,000 support for them.

According to her, the area of focus for STEMbees feeds into government's commitment to develop that area for national development.

In line with this, she said the ministry, through the Ghana Investment Fund for Electronic Investment, was training more than 600 girls annually in Information Communication Technology (ICT).

She said the government was willing to empower STEMbees to expand its tentacle to robe in more ladies in their endeavour.

The meeting was also used to demonstrate how the robot, created by the girls, would be used at the competition for packaging.

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