Kenya’s EdTech entrepreneur and founder of Kytabu, a textbook leasing application that allows users have access to digitized textbooks at 40% reduction of the normal price, Anthony Tonee Ndungu, has won $150,000 in the recently concluded African Entrepreneurship Award.

The African Entrepreneurship Award created to help entrepreneurs start or grow their businesses with funds and quality mentoring schemes is powered by BMCE Bank of Africa. It rewards 10 entrepreneurs with a total of $1million and team them up with several mentors who will act as a sounding board and guide to the business and its entrepreneurs. A clear statement from the facilitators of the award reads:

The African Entrepreneurship Award will help you start or grow your business to create jobs and impact Africa. Every entrepreneur needs more than money. You need mentors to come alongside you, advise you, ask hard questions, encourage you, comfort you, and help you persevere.

The AEA focuses on four categories and they are Environment, Education, Uncharted, and Additional Awards. The first three categories have two winning startups each, each startup winning $150k while the four in the Additional category win $25k each.

Tonee’s Kytabu won in the education sector alongside Seebox by Johann KOK of South Africa. Both entrepreneurs won $150000 each. The Award came in recognition of Kytabu as premium EdTech software that has contributed immensely to the accessibility of education in Kenya.

Kytabu is a textbook subscription application on a low-cost tablet that allows users to rent books on an hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, and annual timeline on a mobile platform payment plan. Kytabu allows primary and high school students in Kenya to access all the textbooks in the Kenyan Education Curriculum as digital learning material without having to download them on a broadband network. The books all come pre-installed in the subsidized tablet that they can then use to lease the books directly from the tablet, without a mobile network gateway. The entire transaction is done on the tablet.

Already a beneficiary of funds from two American angel investors, Kytabu targets mainstream public education curriculum contents. It has also received funding from big names like Microsoft.

Kytabu is just one of the many feathers adorning Tonee’s cap, as a serial entrepreneur, he also cofounded NaiLab Incubation and Consulting.

Other winners from the main categories are:

• Environment for $150,000 each to the winners:

Tadese GETAHUN EDESA (Ethiopia) – Trash is Cash Waste Management that converts waste to compost and compete with chemical fertilizers.

Elia TIMOTHEO (Tanzania) Greenhouse Farming and Cold Chain Logistics to improve storage, handling and transportation to help smallholder farmers.

• Uncharted for $150,000 each to the winners:

William MAPHAM (South Africa) Vula Mobile, a mobile platform for diagnosing conditions remotely and connecting patients, healthcare workers and specialists for more accurate diagnoses and referrals through the mobile phone.

Adama KANE (Senegal) Jokko $anté, a mobile platform for sharing and cross-financing medications incentivizing both pharmacists and patients to work together to get 80% of the working population medicines they need.