National Artificial Intelligence In Tourism Contest: Raingou Ngouyap Herbert Lifts Trophy

T he National Artificial Intelligence in Tourism contest that united over 100 contestants saw Rain­ gou Ngouyap Herbert etch his name as the laureate of the maiden edition of the competition that ended yes­ terday September 28, 2026 in Yaounde. The 24-year-old Software Engineer who studied at the African Institute of Computer Science, Ca­ meroon, and is currently enrolled for an advanced Software degree in China designed the Smart Mboa App that explores artificial intelligence features like Chat Generative Pre-Trained Trans­ former (Chat GPT) to guide tourists visiting the country. The Smart Mboa app that represents the transformative digital Cameroon often casually re­ ferred to as “Africa in Miniature”, seeks to solve problems of geo-localization, site identification and reservation by hosting several Cameroonian meals and recreational places including ho­ tels, beaches, churches, lakes, zoos and every beautiful feature a tourist may want to experience while in Ca­ meroon. Topping the contest chart of the contestants who made it to the top ten, Raingou Ngouyap Herbert bags the sum of FCFA 1.5 million handed to him by interim Minister of Tourism and Leisure, Gabriel Mbairobe. Accor­ ding to Raingou Ngouyap, this finan­ cial award would help his team trans­ form the prototype to an actual tou­ rism app that aligns with local contex­ tual realities such as language, tra­ ditional dish...