Africa-Press – Lesotho. Earth Movers, an Orapa-based Livingstone House Primary School robotics team is set to represent Botswana at the regional First Lego League (FLL) to be held in Kigali, Rwanda. The team leaves wednesday for the competition which would be staged in two days from March 16-17.
Speaking at a send-off dinner in Orapa on Tuesday, the team president, Mr Keabetswe Maoto indicated that Earth Movers would compete in four categories of robot design, innovative project, core values and robot game.
Earth Movers travel to Rwanda after they were crowned champions of the First Lego League Botswana and had also represented the country at the regional FLL in South Africa recently.
Mr Maoto said Livingstone House Primary School was the only primary school against 15 junior secondary and senior schools in the 2023-2024 season. They were crowned second runners-up and champions on robot design, got position two on innovative project and third on core values.
Mr Maoto said coding presented with it some challenges which included funding because challenge sets, lego pieces and robots were expensive. “The year 2024 was a challenge because Debswana was going through financial challenges,” he said.
He however thanked the Ministry of Communications, Knowledge and Technology for sponsoring the trip Rwanda to cover flights, food and accommodation as well as allowances.
On one hand, Mr Maoto encouraged all Orapa schools to have coding clubs, partake in inter-school competitions and further adopt coding as part of the curriculum.
Motivating learners, Ms Tlotlo Gaobinelwe informed the team that they were on the right path as the world was revolving and needed tech-savvy minds. Ms Gaobinelwe said robotics learners were responsible for leading the future as the world moved towards the fourth industrial revolution (4IR).
She urged them to participate in the global entrepreneurship week and set the standard high from a young age. “Own the moment, you are already making names for yourselves as young as you are.
You will never know who is watching you, so you need to plug in your A game,” she said. Robotics team captain, Adrienne Mazhele said coding was good because it also covered research while learners also learnt how to present ideas, work as a team and be inclusive.
Mazhele thanked parents, the school management as well as Debswana management for their support. Meanwhile, First Lego League is an international robotics competition for learners aged 9-16 that aimed to inspire young people to pursue Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) careers.
The competition challenged teams to design, build and programme autonomous robots using Lego kits to complete a set of missions on a themed playing field. The team is expected back home on March 19 (Tuesday).
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