All School Books on the Mobile

All School Books on the Mobile

The Kenyan Tonee Ndungu has created the Kytabu mobile application, which allows students to access cheaper manuals and connect the entire educational community in one device

Tonee Ndungu arrives in a purple tracksuit jacket with the Kytabu logo , the application he created six years ago in Kenya. Recently arrived from Barcelona to participate in the V Ship2B Impact Forum , an event where social impact start-ups are presented . At the headquarters of the Open Value Foundation , which focuses on philanthropy and impact investing, he explains how he carried out Kytabu - which in Swahili means book - and that has allowed more than 12,700 Kenyan students so far to have available in their mobile device all the text they need at school at a very low price.

"A book can cost about six dollars but for a school year a student needs seven media manuals. If you multiply that by the four sons and daughters that a family can have, the price increases a lot. In addition, to that we must add the school's registration and uniforms, so for many families it becomes an unaffordable figure, "says Ndungu. 

This entrepreneur was born and raised in Nairobi. At the age of 13, he realized that his learning problems became more acute with the passage of school courses and years later he knew that he was suffering from dyslexia . "I was a good student in primary school, when there were pictures in the books and everything was explained through them, but when I went to high school it was over and everything was text and more text. That's when my problems started. Dyslexia means that you can read but your mind does not know or understand what you read, "he explains. For him, getting a degree in college was a big challenge. He did it in international relations and journalism.

In 2008, he created a techub , a space to launch emerging technology-related businesses to the market. "Those kinds of businesses were very new in Africa at that time and in Kenya they were starting to emerge. We managed to create something fantastic and in a few years we won five million euros. I met many projects and I realized that with small technological advances you can positively impact many people. "

Thanks to the mobile application that created, both schoolchildren in whose center the system is implemented and those who simply download the application, can rent for days, weeks or a whole school year, a book for only about 0.018 cents. "The conversion is ridiculous and you also do not have the physical copy with the problems you have, for example, for transportation," says Tonee, adding that this makes it possible to avoid the obsolescence of the paper left by outdated manuals.

The application allows students to access books in Swaziland and English, thanks to the agreement they support with ten editorials that have allowed them to digitize more than 1,700 copies. In addition, teachers upload explanatory videos, graphics, images and mock exams so that students have more tools. Parents are also part of this system and in the schools where it is currently implemented -174- they can follow the academic progress of their children, know the days they have missed class during the year and participate in the decisions of the center. "We wanted a platform where teachers, students, parents and schools were involved, so they could interact together," Ndungu stresses.

For Tonee the main challenges of education in Kenya are that, despite the fact that in 2003 free primary education was introduced in the country, a million children still can not access school due to the distance between their homes and the educational centers, the low quality of education and that education is still expensive in the country. "This application can be a tool to reach those places where children can not access education for different reasons but maybe they do have a basic mobile phone." According to the latest figures from the Kenyan government , in 2012 around 70% of the population already had a mobile phone.

Kytabu uses a subscription service that is based on mobile money to rent books and pay only for the amount of time you want to use it. "In Kenya we have a very advanced mobile payment system, which is why it becomes your portfolio and where you have all your applications related to health, financial, educational or leisure. In addition, people increasingly have better phones with more durable batteries. With the entry of China, now you can find in the mobile market at very affordable prices, for about 30 dollars so more and more people have one, "explains Ndungu. The country has experienced in the last decade a great technological revolution and mobile moneyIt has become the financial logic of most people in the country. Mobile payments have become the most common form of payment, because access to traditional banking is more complicated and expensive. According to the GSMA, association of mobile operators and companies, in 2015, 59% of the adult population of Kenya used some mobile money service.

"The future of education is to connect it to the jobs of the future. Africans and Africans must be educated to participate in these new jobs that are emerging. We are the continent with the largest number of young people ", a generation that for Tonee will change their reality and that of the world.