Mphatso Simbao: Zambian Teen Who Won at Google Science Fair

Biography

What Mphatso Simbao entered

The entry is recorded under the title "Cheap production of nitrogen pesticides and fertilizers through hydrolysis of plant protein for rural use". That single line is the clearest statement of the idea that survives: take plant protein, break it down with hydrolysis, and recover from it the nitrogen that a crop needs, using a process simple enough to run outside an industrial plant.

Simbao was 18 in the year of the award. Zambia is a country where most farming is smallholder farming, and the cost of bagged fertiliser is the reason many fields go under-fed. A teenager proposing to make the nitrogen locally, from material that grows on the farm, was answering that problem directly.

The award he won

The 2016 Google Science Fair gave Simbao its National Geographic Explorer Award, one of the named prizes the fair handed out alongside its grand prize. The fair itself was an annual online competition for students aged 13 to 18, run globally and judged on a submitted project rather than on a school ranking, and the winners of each edition are listed in the public record of the competition.

The distinction matters for how the achievement should be read. This was not a national heat or a school science night. Entries arrived from dozens of countries, and a single teenager from Zambia came out of that field holding one of the fair's named awards.

Why the page is thin

The Google Science Fair's own project page for Simbao is no longer online. When a competition retires its website, the primary account of a young scientist's work can disappear with it, and what remains is a title, a year and an award line in a list. That is the situation here, and it is the reason this profile does not describe his results, his yields or his method in any more detail than the title gives.

Nothing about the gap suggests the work was slight. It suggests only that the record of it was hosted on a platform that did not outlast the contest. The award itself is not in dispute; it sits in the compiled record of Google Science Fair winners.

What is known since

No later reporting on Simbao appears in the sources used for this page. There is no documented university place, no company, no patent, no follow-up interview and no statement from him about what became of the fertiliser idea after 2016.

That silence is common for young winners outside the American and European press circuit. An African teenager can win a global science prize and then vanish from searchable English-language coverage entirely, not because the story ended but because no outlet followed it. This page records the gap rather than filling it.

Why the problem he picked is a hard one

Nitrogen is the input that limits most cereal harvests, and it is the input smallholders most often cannot buy. Any route to producing it closer to the field, at a lower price, attracts attention for that reason, which is plainly what the National Geographic Explorer Award was recognising in a project pitched explicitly "for rural use".

Whether the process Simbao described was ever tested beyond his own experiments is not documented in the available record. Readers should treat claims about the yield, the cost per kilogram or any commercial deployment of the method with suspicion unless a source is shown.

Achievement Timeline

Mphatso Simbao — every milestone on this page, in order.

2016

Enters the Google Science Fair with a Enters the Google Science Fair with a project on making nitrogen fertiliser and pesticide from hydrolysed plant protein

2016

Receives the fair's National GeographiReceives the fair's National Geographic Explorer Award at 18

2016

Project page published on the Google SProject page published on the Google Science Fair site, later taken offline with the rest of the competition archive

Historical Comparison

Person	Country	Milestone	Age / Stat
Rishi Shiv Prasanna	India	Winning the Pradhan Mantri Rashtriya Bal Puraskar in 2023 at eight, for…	Age 0
Cannan Huey-You	United States	Presenting research on a Milky Way gas cloud at the American Astronomical…	Age 11
Ángela Olazarán Laureano	Mexico	An AI medical assistant built in Veracruz, designed to work where there is	Age 14
Émer Hickey	Ireland	Co-winning the 2014 Google Science Fair grand prize	Age 16
Mphatso Simbao	Zambia	National Geographic Explorer Award, Google Science Fair 2016	Age 18

What is documented — and what is not

✓ Documented

He won the National Geographic Explorer Award at the 2016 Google Science Fair
His project was titled Cheap production of nitrogen pesticides and fertilizers through hydrolysis of plant protein for rural use
He was 18 in 2016 and is from Zambia

? Unverified, disputed or wrong

The full method, results and any field testing - the original project page is offline
What he studied or did after 2016
Whether the process was ever produced or sold at any scale
Any family, school or biographical detail

Questions people ask about Mphatso Simbao

How old is Mphatso Simbao?

He was born in 1998 and was 18 at the time of the 2016 Google Science Fair award. No date of birth is given in the sources used here.

What did Mphatso Simbao invent?

A method, as his project title puts it, for cheap production of nitrogen pesticides and fertilizers through the hydrolysis of plant protein, intended for rural use.

What award did he win?

The National Geographic Explorer Award at the 2016 Google Science Fair, a global online competition for students aged 13 to 18.

Did he win the Google Science Fair grand prize?

No. The record shows a named award, the National Geographic Explorer Award, not the grand prize.

Where is Mphatso Simbao now?

No source used here reports what he has done since 2016. No university, employer or later project is documented.

Is Mphatso Simbao on Wikipedia?

He has no article of his own. His award appears in the winners listing in Wikipedia's article on the Google Science Fair.

Why is his project page missing?

The Google Science Fair site retired its project pages, so the original description of his entry is no longer online. Only the title and award line survive.