As an experienced startup ecosystem builder, he launched his incubator to support entrepreneurs who want to solve Uganda's problems using digital tools.  

Richard Zulu (photo) is a founding partner and leader of Outbox Uganda, an innovation hub based in Kampala. He founded the incubator, in 2012, to support businesses in their development stage.  

Through Outbox -a Google for Startups’ partner- he helps new and aspiring African entrepreneurs interested in using technology to solve Uganda's problems. He provides entrepreneurs with a space to work, and access mentorship, training, markets, and financing.  

‘It was about working with entrepreneurs, making sure they succeed, taking them through the process of how they go about the legal aspects, marketing, branding, building structures of a company and going as far as helping them to launch to market,’ he was explaining back in 2018.  

With Outbox partners, he also organizes challenges to reward the best technological solutions in areas such as education, finance, agriculture, media, and entertainment. Through its project Primaa, the incubator is also building low-cost environmental monitoring stations to improve the availability of OpenData on air quality in African urban centers.

Richard Zulu is a former leader of the Kampala chapter of the Google Developer Group and a 2014 fellow of Acumen East Africa. He is also the director of the Kampala chapter of Startup Grind, a global community that aims to inspire, educate, and network entrepreneurs.

He entered the professional world, in 2010, working as a network administrator at Makerere University’s directorate for ICT support. A year later, while still at the ICT support directorate, he co-organized the Garage48 Kampala- a Bootcamp and startup hackathon series- and Start-up Weekend Kampala 2012, a tech Bootcamp.

In 2014, design studio IDEO.org hired him as the community manager of Amplify, its series of 10 design challenges focused on creating innovative solutions to pressing development problems. In August 2016, he officiated as a part-time innovative justice agent for Hiil, The Hague Institute for Innovation of Law. He has also worked as an Open Government Fellow at Code For Africa, an African network of labs that uses technology and OpenData to build digital solutions. In 2021, he joined Plan International as a human-centered design consultant for the Playful Futures program.

Melchior Koba