How a Botswana entrepreneur found opportunity in Zambia and DRC’s mining sector

Interview with Calisto Radithipa
FOUNDER and CEO, KEMCORE

Lives in: Cape Town, South Africa

Calisto Radithipa has built Kemcore into a key supplier to Zambia and DRC’s copper and cobalt mines.

Calisto Radithipa was born in Marobela village in eastern Botswana, near the Zimbabwean border. In 2001, with local universities full, he received a government bursary to study finance at Bond University in Johannesburg, the South African branch of the Australian institution.

While visiting Botswana during the holidays he caught up with a friend working in the UK who said finance jobs there were plentiful, even without a degree. Britain then offered a two-year working-holiday visa for young people from Commonwealth countries. Keen to earn some money, Radithipa decided to pause his studies and head to the UK.

Radithipa arrived in London, but his job search faltered. On his friend’s advice he applied for senior roles, but when no offers came, he lowered his sights and started applying for more entry-level positions. He eventually found work at a document-management company removing staples from papers. After a few months, he returned to South Africa to complete his degree, and then went back to Britain, this time landing a data-entry position at the Royal Bank of Scotland. The job was basic, but the name carried weight on his CV.

When his visa expired, he and his girlfriend moved to Shanghai, where her sister was teaching English. Unable to find work in finance, he became a part-time English teacher earning about $1,000 a month. Inspired by stories of online millionaires, he started a side business selling jeans on eBay. He bought them from Shanghai markets, photographed them, and listed them online.

Entering the mining chemicals industry

By 2008, Radithipa wanted something more scalable. “At the time, China was looking for a lot of commodities – chrome, manganese, all these things,” he says. He tried linking Chinese buyers with African suppliers, but most deals collapsed in a maze of unreliable middlemen.

He registered his first company, 300cc Asia-Pacific, in Hong Kong. But after months of chasing deals and signing non-disclosure agreements, nothing materialised. Browsing Alibaba one day, he noticed a Zimbabwean company seeking chemicals for gold mining. He called, introduced himself, and was soon appointed their exclusive sourcing agent for $2,500 a month. “I could breathe. I could pay my rent comfortably,” he says. It was his first steady income in years – and his entry into the mining chemicals industry.

Mining depends on a range of chemicals to separate valuable metals from ordinary rock. In gold mining, for example, substances such as cyanide dissolve the gold so it can be extracted and refined. In copper and cobalt mining, other chemicals are used to achieve similar results. Flotation agents help separate the metal from the surrounding material, while acids and alkalis – such as sulfuric acid or caustic soda – remove unwanted impurities. These chemicals make it possible to extract metals that would otherwise remain locked inside the ore.

Before long, he started looking to grow the business beyond a single customer. So, he created a website that included everything potential buyers might ask for – product specifications, technical data, end-use applications, pictures, and, most importantly, pricing. The website was called Kemcore – the name under which the company trades today.

He taught himself search-engine optimisation via YouTube, and traffic grew. The first major client that came through the site was a global miner that operated copper and cobalt projects in Zambia and the DRC. The company invited Kemcore to tender for a $10 million order. He won a small share worth $500,000, but it secured him a place on the supplier list.

Because Kemcore was effectively a one-man operation, it could respond faster than competitors. “I ended up getting a lot of orders because of the turnaround speed,” he says.

In 2018, Kemcore won its biggest contract – $10 million – to supply sodium metabisulphite (SMBS), a chemical used in cobalt refining. He opened offices in Johannesburg, South Africa and Ndola, Zambia. He also bought 25 trucks for cross-border deliveries. Branded Kemcore, the trucks gave the company visibility and reliability. Clients such as Glencore followed, and annual revenue reached about $25 million by 2019.

Becoming a manufacturer

Having toured Chinese factories as a trader, Radithipa began to think about manufacturing chemicals himself. Then, in 2020, a Zambian gypsum producer shut down, creating a shortage in the market. Radithipa discovered gypsum could be made artificially by mixing limestone with sulphuric acid. He decided to move ahead with the idea.

The project, however, became a drawn-out ordeal. Poor planning, unsuitable machinery from China, and repeated breakdowns delayed the plant for three years. “We learned some hard lessons there,” he says. By the time the factory launched, the market had changed. Buyers had switched to imports from Namibia or new local suppliers. “In fact, there was no profit – there were no customers.”

Gradually, though, Kemcore built a client base that now includes Dangote Cement, Zambezi Portland, and Huaxin-owned Chilanga Cement. The plant employs about 70 people and produces around 100 tonnes of gypsum a day. “We’re going to produce at least 100 tonnes a day and should be able to make around $100,000 in monthly profit – we should be okay,” says Radithipa.

Power shortages remain a challenge. Zambia’s drought has drained hydro dams, forcing electricity rationing. “We only get about 12 hours of power a day,” he says.

Looking ahead

Kemcore’s trading arm hit record revenue of $48 million in 2022 as cobalt and copper prices surged. But by 2023, the cobalt price collapsed  amid oversupply and a shift to cobalt-free battery technology. The DRC intervened with an export ban and later quotas, helping prices recover by late 2025.

Despite setbacks, Radithipa remains upbeat about the outlook for mining chemicals. He estimates the Zambia-DRC market at $4 billion and points to new copper and cobalt projects in the region. The Kalahari Copper Belt, stretching across Botswana and Namibia, is also emerging as a major source of demand.

Kemcore is now finalising finance for its next leap: a $103 million Integrated Battery Mineral Chemicals Complex in Palapye, Botswana. The facility will make chemicals used in extracting and refining copper, cobalt, and gold.

Radithipa argues there are strong reasons to localise production. China’s dominance in supply chains, he says, exposed vulnerabilities during Covid-19. Producing closer to mines would cut emissions and save miners about 35% on imported costs.

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