H-Metro Reporter
A University of Zimbabwe Biomedical Engineering student is dreaming of establishing a chemical manufacturing plant in Africa.
The 20-year-old Wilbert Machoba, who is an inventor and entrepreneur, founded his company Chilbur Chemicals Pvt Ltd in July this year.
He is currently studying biomedical engineering as a part 1.1 student at UZ.
“My dream is to come up with a chemical manufacturing plant throughout the whole of Africa.
“It was not an easy journey, I had no money and I visited UZ to speak with some lectures about my idea.
“I also went to HIT to speak to one of the lecturers whom I know and he had no money. Then I approached my former high school teacher, Mr Chivere who helped me with some money which I also added to my personal savings.
“That’s when I registered the company, bought some raw materials and visited Standard Association of Zimbabwe (SAZ) and other organisations.
“Right now the company is only distributing chemicals so as to get profit to buy machinery and also to acquire a good land to do our manufacturing process.
“We don’t have a small branch in the CBD yet and that’s the obstacle we have for now since customers want fast delivery.”
He hopes the company will benefit the country so that they can stop importing reagents from China and India and also create more employment locally.
“We want to provide the country with a vast range of organic, inorganic and electrophoresis reagents used in chemical synthesis and analysis.
“I am facing many obstacles but when something is important enough you do it even if the odds are not in your favour.
“I want to push the human race forward, to leave the world in a better position than it was when I found it,” he said.
Wilbert did his A level at Chikore High School from 2020- 2021 and managed to score 15 points in Pure Mathematics, Biology and Geography.
Due to his passion in Biomedical Engineering he applied for it at UZ in 2022 but was rejected because chemistry was a compulsory Subject.
He returned and did chemistry at Excellent Tutorials College from July to October 2022 despite lacking any Chemistry background at O level.
“I unfortunately got a C in chemistry and with this knowledge of chemistry I acquired, I decided to go deeper with my studies, writing formulations of different products and business proposals.”