- A slim majority (52%) of Zimbabweans live in zones served by the national electricity grid.
- About one-third (34%) of respondents live in households that are connected to the national power grid. o Fewer than one in 10 rural residents (8%) are connected to the grid, compared with a large majority (69%) of urban residents.
- Among those who are connected to the grid, only four in 10 say their electricity works “most of the time” (34%) or “all of the time” (6%).
- Combining connection and reliability rates shows that a mere 14% of all Zimbabweans enjoy a reliable supply of electricity from the national grid. Only 4% of rural residents report a reliable electricity supply.
- Half (50%) of those surveyed use sources of energy other than the national grid, among whom nine in 10 (89%) say they use solar panels. o Better-off Zimbabweans are nearly twice as likely as poor citizens to utilise alternative energy sources (64% vs 35%). o Rural residents are also more likely than urban inhabitants to rely on electricity from a source other than the national provider (55% vs. 43%).
- Two-thirds (66%) of citizens say the government is doing a poor job of providing a reliable supply of electricity, a figure that is up by 19 percentage points compared with 2021. o Negative appraisals are particularly widespread among the poor (75%).
Following major nationwide power outages at the end of last year, Zimbabwe’s crippling electricity crisis has been thrust into the spotlight once more (Zimbabwe Mail, 2024a). In a spectacular display of the country’s dire electricity situation, Parliament was unexpectedly submerged in darkness during Finance and Investment Promotion Minister Mthuli Ncube’s 2025 national budget speech (ZimEye, 2024).
Members of Parliament have been demanding a decisive plan of action from the government to deal with extensive “load shedding” – power cuts – that often last up to 18 hours per day (Zimbabwe Mail, 2024a, 2024b).
In his speech, Ncube predicted that the energy crisis will endure until at least 2030, citing insufficient capacity to meet growing demand (Matola, 2024). In the face of this challenge, the government has set aside ZiG259.8 million (about U.S. $10 million) of the 2025 budget for the Ministry of Energy and Power Development to increase investment in power generation, transmission, and distribution as well as rural electrification, and stakeholders have been urged to invest in energy generation to help tackle the deficit (Nyoni, 2024). The government has also committed to generating 1,100 megawatts of power from renewable energy sources by 2025 and 2,100 megawatts by 2030 (Bulawayo24, 2024).
Amid this crisis and recent calls by Zimbabwean activists for the government to declare a state of disaster over the matter (Mbofana, 2024), a 2024 Afrobarometer survey provides an on-the-ground look at electricity access in the country.
Findings show that while roughly half of citizens live in zones served by the national electricity grid, only about one in seven enjoy a reliable supply of electricity from the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (ZESA), including fewer than one in 20 rural residents.
Half of Zimbabweans say they use alternative sources of energy. Solar power is the preferred off-grid power solution, utilised by nine in 10 respondents who resort to other sources of energy.
Two-thirds of citizens are critical of the government’s performance on providing electricity, compared with fewer than half of respondents who expressed dissatisfaction in 2021.
