Zimbabwe experienced a nationwide power outage on Monday evening following a technical fault on the country’s electricity transmission network, according to state-owned power utility ZESA Holdings.
The utility said the blackout occurred at approximately 18:24 hours and was triggered by a fault within its transmission system.
In a statement issued on its official Facebook page, ZESA said its technical teams were investigating the cause of the disruption while engineers worked to stabilise the national grid and restore electricity supply.
The company assured customers that restoration efforts were ongoing and that all available resources were being deployed to return power to affected areas as quickly as possible.
Zimbabwe, with a population of more than 17 million people, has an installed electricity generation capacity of about 2,962 megawatts (MW). However, ageing infrastructure, reduced hydropower output due to drought conditions, and frequent equipment failures often limit actual generation capacity to about 1,600 MW.
These challenges have forced the country to rely on electricity imports from neighbouring countries, including Zambia and Mozambique, while implementing scheduled power cuts to manage supply shortages.
ZESA said it would continue to provide updates as restoration efforts progressed and apologised to customers for the inconvenience caused by the outage.