(A column highlighting scientific, technological, engineering, and design innovation in Africa)
Thirteen-year-old Somali native Guled Adan Abdi is producing toys and home appliances using scraps of plastic he collects in garbage dumps and batteries he buys at two for 25 (US) cents. To date, he has built cars, trucks and planes of various designs, as well as a fan that can be used as a light at night.
In an interview with the BBC Somali Service, the teenager says he has been making plastic toys for years. “I used to play with them without any motor. But later I said to myself, ‘Why don’t you make them into a moving machine?’ So I looked at the cars in the town and invented my toys with the same design,” he recounts.
Guled works on his toys from noon until the evening, lately with an audience since his story has spread. Entirely self-taught, he has studied every detail of how a real car works, including how the tires turn. “I’ve never seen anyone make such things and I was not trained by anyone,” he tells the BBC.
He turns the toys into moving machines by connecting them to a battery-powered control box marked with a plus and minus sign. The toys move backward when the control is switched to the minus sign, and forward when it is switched to the plus sign.
Guled lives at home with his older brother and sister, and his single mother who supports the family by making and selling anjeera, the local pancakes. Initially, his mother would scold him about the clutter created by his model cars, but his schoolteacher encouraged him to continue with his experimenting and even bought him the first batteries.
For now, Guled hopes he will get the funds to produce more toys, which he then would sell. His long-term goal, however, is to produce real cars.
The teenage toymaker hails from the northern town of Buhodle in the semi-autonomous state of Puntland. Puntland President Abdiweli Mohamed Ali has promised that the local government will fund his education and support his innovations.
