About Dolores
Dolores is a 20-year-old entrepreneur from Kibaha, Tanzania. She is passionate about serving children from impoverished lives to ensure their access to quality education. In order to empower them for a brighter future and potentially become the next African changemakers, she cofounded Maktaba.
Transition into Entrepreneurship
Dolores is a high school graduate and self-taught computer programmer. She has been interested in starting her own business since her middle school. Dolores decided to stop her education and take a gap year to focus on growing her business.
Business Profile
80% of primary school students in Tanzania lack quality education according to SACMEQ 2010 data. Knowing that fact, Dolores cofounded Maktaba to revolutionize the digital education sector to enable equal accessibility to quality education at an affordable price to all groups of people. Maktaba sells educational documents such as past papers, notes and online content books to parents, schools, and teachers. Content is available for nursery level all the way to high school. The business was founded in Tanzania and has customers in 13 regions on the mainland, with most of its buyers coming from Dar es Salaam, Arusha and Dodoma.
Maktaba is bridging the disparity in the accessibility of quality education among students in rural and urban areas. Dolores believes in equal and equitable access to quality education despite of their gender, class or learning abilities. By 2026, she aims at increasing the percentage of girls with basic literacy skills from 35% to 50% in Tanzania. She also aims at creating 400 permanent jobs across Tanzania.
