The 12-year-old Fathia Abdullahi is the dream of any clothing store sales assistant, who folds and refolds clothes on most days. Or a dream-come-true for those of us whose laundry makes us feel we are folding and refolding our clothes the whole day.
Fathia designed a robot prototype to fold T-shirts because "there are too much clothes to fold."
READ MORE: The little girl inside you needs a hero too
According to Reuters, her robot – made from pins, beams and an EV3 brick – folds a T-shirt in three seconds.
Fathia reportedly started coding when she was 11 years old, and a year later she has already made her own footprint in the world through her innovation.
Young Nigerian coder creates a laundry-folding robot pic.twitter.com/kjeXLGLge8
— Reuters Top News (@Reuters) July 5, 2019
While she hopes to be a food scientist when she grows up, Fathia’s innovation also brings Karli Kloss to mind – the fashion model who codes, and the personification of fashion-meets-tech.
Karli told Teen Vogue that the intersection of fashion with tech is where she "found her groove."
Since she began coding, Karli says she "quickly came to understand that code is a superpower every young woman should be able to access.”
READ MORE: "Women will save South Africa" - Oprah Winfrey
Flexing her own superpower, Fathia is the key example of how coding skills can’t be overstated – particularly for young girls in Africa.
She’s innovating our wardrobes and in five to 10 years, she surely will be innovating dinner plates, fulfilling her dream as a food scientist.
Sign up to W24’s newsletters so you don't miss out on any of our hot stories and giveaways.