A fervent advocate for technological advancement, he has been instrumental in organizing numerous hackathons and innovation competitions across diverse technology domains. He has also founded a tech platform aimed at revolutionizing tourism in Africa.
Prince Youlou (photo) is a Congolese web developer and IT consultant. He graduated in Project Management (2010) and Computer Science (2011) from the IT Business Campus, further enhancing his skills with a certificate in information technology from Huawei University (in 2018).
In 2020, alongside Orion Massamba Wambert, Prince co-founded Niochi, where he serves as the CEO. Meaning "bee" in the local Lari language, Niochi is on a mission to make tourists feel at home when visiting African countries. For that purpose, the startup introduced a mobile app that empowers users to access detailed information on locations, public ratings, and satisfaction indexes for hotels, restaurants, and bars, helping them find the perfect spot.
Prince Youlou's motivation for Niochi stemmed from personal experiences: "Over the years, we've tried many tools and none of them helped us find the best spots in Congo and some of the African countries we've stayed in. That's how we decided to create Niochi, to give people access to detailed information on entertainment venues, accommodation, personal care, and wellness services across the continent," he explained in 2020.
Beyond Niochi, Prince has been actively involved in the tech community. Since 2015, he has been the president of Fongwama, an African community of free software developers. In 2019, he took on the role of leading research and development projects for UNDP Acceleration Labs.
His diverse experience includes serving as the project manager for SanteHack, a healthcare innovation hackathon for Equatorial Congo Airlines in 2016. He has also organized impactful hackathons such as Hack4Food –an initiative by the World Food Program (WFP)- in 2017 and Médiathon –an innovation competition in the information production and dissemination sector organized by the OIF– in 2018.
Melchior Koba
