Meet Somalia’s 13-year-old Inventor Who Is Doing Incredible Things!

A 13-year-old boy’s passion for making electronic toys in Somalia has won him local fame and a free education.

Guled Adan Abdi, from the north town of Buhodle, taught himself how to make plastic toys from bits of discarded objects, and then worked out how to motorise them by studying real cars.

“I started making toys when I was younger,” he told the BBC Somali Service.

“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.”

So far, he has constructed four electronic toys, including a truck and a plane, mainly using plastic from old cooking oil containers.

He has also invented a fan that can also be used as a light at night.

Guled lives at home with his mother and older brother and sister, and goes to a school in Buhodle that is supported by Somalis in the diaspora.
But over he has missed out on a lot of his education and is only in the third year at primary school – a class usually for eight year olds.

This is because his father disappeared in 2002 and is presumed dead.

I have never seen anyone make such things and I was not trained by anyone. I investigated and found out for example how a car’s tyres turn”

His mother struggles to earn enough from selling anjeera – Somali pancakes – so when things get tough financially, the family sometimes has to stay with relatives in a rural area where Guled cannot go to school.