She said the selection of the schools was done randomly from a pool of over 3,000 list issued by the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training. "Since we started our books support project, about seven years ago, we have reached more than 1,000 secondary schools that are spread across the country," she said.

"We have spent more than 110m/- on buying these books so as to facilitate each school with books worth 2m/-," Ms Mallya said. Ms Mallya added that the firm worked with the Ministry to establish the requirements based on their curriculum and subjects offered at the institutions.

She said that enabled Airtel to procure and handover sets of books that adequately meet the needs of the schools. Last year, she said, Airtel donated books to 104 secondary schools.

Tanzania Education Authority (TEA) Senior Resource Allocation officer, Mr Masozi Nyirenda, commended Airtel for its investment and commitment to improve education. "We are inspired by Airtel for recognising the importance of education in our society," he said.