Africa Internet Governance Forum 2025

Athanase Bahizire is a software engineer and a youth advocate from the Southern Kivu province in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He holds a bachelor's degree in computer science and a data protection certificate. He has been actively involved in the Internet ecosystem; he is a member of the ITU Generation Connect community, the ISOC chapter of DRC, and the ISOC youth standing group. He was an ICANN78 fellow. He assisted the 17th global IGF as a technical support UNECA volunteer and was a fellow of the Central Africa School of Internet Governance. He co-founded the Youth IGF DRCongo and is currently its coordinator. He is an ISOC Youth Ambassador for the year 2023 and facilitator for the Pan-African Youth Ambassadors on Internet Governance. He advocates for child online protection and digital inclusion, and he believes in the value of bringing youth voices, particularly from the Global South, into discussions around global matters. He has worked on various public consultation and research projects, most recently the Global Digital Compact. He is fluent in French and English and is a native Swahili speaker. Athanase believes that participating in a situation is the best way to create sustainable change.