The Afghanistan Girls Robotics Team - or Afghan Dreamers as they are widely known - channel their passion for technology for the betterment of society.
Founded in Herat, Afghanistan in 2017 by Roya Mahboob, the first female CEO of a tech company in the country, the Afghanistan Girls Robotics Team - or Afghan Dreamers as they are widely known - is currently made up of 50 members spread across Qatar, Europe, the UAE and their native Afghanistan.
Half of the population of Afghanistan is aged under 25 (27.5 million Afghans) but the country is actually one of the world’s most inhospitable places for female education. According to a study by Unicef of out-of-school rates, Afghanistan ranks 6th for the percentage of girls out of primary education, at 47% of the population. This figure only increases as the level of study advances. Almost three-quarters of girls are out of education by the time they reach upper-secondary age, compared to under half of boys the same age.
Since the Taliban’s return to power in 2021, even more girls have been forced to leave education. However, this hasn’t stopped the Afghan Dreamers from channeling their passion for technology for the betterment of society. Initially a group of just seven students; the team design and build innovative and life-saving technologies.
Current research by UNESCO shows that young women make up only 25% of students in engineering or information and communication technology. The global percentage of female researchers is just 30%, and only around a quarter of scientific papers are authored by women. Girls are often put off studying scientific subjects due to a lack of representation of female role models, alongside the pressure to follow stereotypical gender norms. Taking the political situation, societal pressures and the lack of quality education into consideration, it is even more impressive that a group of 12-19 year-old girls are making such a difference in the STEM field.
Despite the odds, the Afghan Dreamers are excelling in the field of scientific study and development. Their work has included building a ball-sorting robot to distinguish between contaminated and clean water (which won them a silver medal at an international robotics competition in Washington, D.C.), developing a solar-powered robot that could help farmers with seeding and other tasks (which won an “Entrepreneur Challenge” at a festival in Estonia) and designing ventilators during the coronavirus pandemic out of used car parts.
'The legacy of these girls will go well beyond the field of robotics' - Roya Mahboob
They have battled opposition and heartbreak, from being denied visas (twice) to attend a robotics competition in the US, to losing family members in suicide bombings and having to leave their home country behind for fear of backlash from the Taliban government. In spite of all of this, they have gone on to win numerous global robotics competitions and feature in lists such as Forbes 30 Under 30.
Many of the initial members of the Afghan Dreamers have since graduated from the team and are continuing their studies at University. A number of the girls currently based in Education City in Qatar (where nine high-profile members were evacuated during the US withdrawal from Afghanistan) plan to return to Afghanistan after graduating from University to help change the future of their country. Roya Mahboob has said that ‘the legacy of these girls will go well beyond the field of robotics’, and they certainly seem to be living up to that already.
Photo credit: Sahar Atie