His Excellency President Paul Kagame graced First Lego League & AI Hackathon competitions

On 16 March 2024, Ministry of Education through Rwanda Basic Education Board (REB) in partnership with Coderina, STEM Inspires, GIZ, Ministry of ICT, International Baccalaureate (IB), the Global Council Learning (GLC), and the Private Sector Federation (PSF) ICT Chamber organized the First Lego League and AI Hackathon Competitions.

His Excellency President of The Republic of Rwanda, Paul Kagame Graced the ceremony of the FLL and AI Hackathon competitions at Intare Conference Arena and delivered the remarks by thanking the participants, and witnessed the work that has been done of great interest to the country, Africa and the entire world.

“I am sure more people will come to be with us next time in First Lego League and Artificial intelligence competitions. I am happy to thank particular countries for participating in this competition, that is Botswana, Nigeria and Uganda. I want to extend thanks and congratulations to the sponsors, organizers of the First Lego League, Global Learning Council, GIZ, and many more other partners that are not mentioned.” His Excellency President Paul Kagame underlined. .

Robotics and artificial intelligence are outstanding ways to learn Science, Engineering technology and also teamwork. I am very happy with the results of national program of robotics competition and the Artificial Intelligence Hackathon. I want to make a contribution toward this effort especially to the participants (Rwandans, people from Botswana, Nigeria and Uganda) those who are with us. I want to give our young people a laptop each to these participants. President Paul Kagame blessed the participants.

“On behalf of students who are here in the room, the parents and educators, I want to thank you very much for taking the time and join us in the final of the First Lego League and AI Hackathon. We have reached the final phase of a competition we began last November which has involved a hundred schools here in Rwanda and different schools from across Africa such as students from Rwanda, Botswana, Nigeria and Uganda.” Hon. Minister Gaspard noted.

“We do the competition in a form of game which help the students to discover, joy, working together, competing, learning and develop that confidence which can provide the solution to the challenges that we have. Robotics and AI are new technologies , we want our students to develop that confidence in them." Hon. Gaspard Twagirayezu said

"Even if it looks magic but it is the magic that they can conquer and use to be able to solve different challenges that we have here on the continent and also elsewhere. Over the last six months, the students you see have been developing the spirit of working together as a team but also they acquired how to accomplish the work in a given time in order to stimulate the world that we never have time but we can solve the challenges in a smallest period of time and succeed.” Hon. Minister Gaspard underlined

"This is not going to end in this competition, but we have also been working to ensure that these principles that we have seen here are also part of the curricular we teach in our schools.” Hon. Gaspard added

Director General of Rwanda Basic Education Board, Dr. Nelson Mbarushima said : “During competition on robotics at Provincial levels, I was fascinated to see young minds achieving big projects with passion & determination. They have built, coded & tested their robots while embracing spirit of collaboration & learning. More than 200 AI teams applied & submitted their projects. Now, only 10 teams were selected to participate to AI Hackathon. These projects on the Artificial Intelligence demonstrated a high-level of critical thinking of our students.”

Robotic teams and Artificial Intelligence teams from different schools have been working hard till the last day. They showcased their talents, efforts, capacity, and audacity to use these emerging technologies to provide tangible and relevant digital solutions for real world challenges.

Winners of First Lego League challenge Rwanda National Championship are the following:

Winner- Innovation Project Award is Collège Saint André

Winner- Core Values Award is TTC Nyamata

Winner - Robot Design Award is Gashora Girls School

Winner - Robot Performance Award is Collège du Christ Roi Team 1

2nd Runner Up Maranyundo Girls School

1st Runner Up Champion – College du Christ Roi Team 1

Rwanda International Championship

Winner -Innovation Project Award - Cyber Titans from Botswana

Winner- Core Values Award - Cyber Genesis from Uganda

Winner - Robot Design Award -Preston International School Akure from Nigeria

Winner - Robot Performance Award FGC Ikirun from Nigeria