President Bio has on the 2nd October 2023 met with Team Sierra Leone who are set to participate in this year’s Robotics competition in Singapore.

The event is organized by the FIRST Global Challenge and will take place from the 7th to the 10th of October 2023. It will bring together thousands of students from more than 190 countries to collaboratively compete in a thrilling game, highlighting the importance of renewable energy and its potential to create a better future for all.

Joyce Wuyah Tejan-Kelle, the Commissioner of the National Commission for Children maintained that this is the fifth time Sierra Leone will be participating in the Robotics competition.

She mentioned that this year’s theme is ‘hydrogen horizon’ and the participants were selected from the Sciences, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, STEM, clubs that they have established in schools across Sierra Leone, adding that, although Sierra Leone is classed as a third-world country, the team will not shy away from competing with those developed nations they will meet at the competition.

She informed the President that the team would leave for Singapore on Tuesday 3 October 2023, adding that 70% of the funds for Sierra Leone’s participation were from the Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, FIRST, called the FIRST Global Challenge and the remaining 30% was from the Government of Sierra Leone.

The mentor of Team Sierra Leone, Emmanuel Kamanda maintained that they had built a robot that could perform four functions, noting that in the competition, the robot should collect and deposit balls within two minutes and thirty seconds, for which they did a performance of the robot and it display for the President to see.

President Bio expressed appreciation over the hard work they have put in and wished them success in the competition.