Co-founder and Robotics engineer Norah Kimathi (R) instructs students at the Kasarani TreeSide Secondary School for the Deaf, in Nairobi on September 4, 2026. Roughly 300,000 children in the east African nation have some kind of hearing impairment, according to the Kenya Society for Deaf Children, who said in 2024 just 20,000 are enrolled in schools. Kenyan start-up Zerobionic, co-founded by 22-year-old Norah Kimathi three years ago, is trying to tackle that issue. Their futuristic arms can manually sign spoken instructions, vital in mixed classrooms where deaf students are often left behind, and can be paired with a bodysuit that records deaf teachers' movements for a STEM-specific sign database. (Photo by SIMON MAINA / AFP via Getty Images)