The teens found the rejection "very disheartening," said Mucktarr M Y Darboe, who is also a director in the largely Muslim West African nation's ministry of higher education.
Darboe said the students were not given a reason for the visa denials in April, and he called the decision "disappointing and unfair."
The Gambia team is not alone. An all-female team from Afghanistan also was denied visas.
The US Embassy in Banjul could not immediately be reached for comment.
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Gambia's government has put forth the money for another round of US visa applications for the robotics team members, and the teens are being interviewed again Wednesday, Darboe said. The students' creation was being shipped Tuesday to the competition.
"We will go for an interview and hope for the best," he said. Each student had to pay a fee of more than $160 for the visas and travel for the interviews.
FIRST Global holds the annual robotics competition to encourage learning in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, or STEM, around the world. It invites one team from each country in an effort to build bridges, organizers said.
This year's competition takes place from July 16-18. Gambia team member Fatoumata Ceesay, 17, said she hopes their second interview will get them to the US, but she was not optimistic.
"It's very disappointing knowing that we are the only two countries that aren't going to take part in the competition," she said. "It would be an experience to see and discover other robots and ask questions and exchange ideas with others. It's more than 160 countries, so we'd have the chance to mingle."
"This is the first time I've worked on a robot ... The experience is so amazing," she said.
If team members are denied visas again, the Gambian American association will represent the robot at the competition, Ceesay said.
Joe Sestak, the president of FIRST Global, said he has already promised the Gambia and Afghanistan teams that they will be Skyping into the competition as their robots are presented. "We still are making them a part of this," he said. Afghanistan has had a US visa refusal rate of 75 percent and Gambia 70 percent, Sestak said.
Forty African nations will be among those attending the competition.
"For Gambia I feel just as saddened. We started this effort in Africa," Sestak said, adding that his organization hopes to hold the competition in various countries in the future to encourage wider attendance.
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