Zimbabwe’s state-owned Zesa Holdings escalated power cuts to as long as 24 hours after losing regional power imports and local generation capacity remains critically constrained.

The power utility has a non-binding agreement to import as much as 400MW of power from South Africa’s Eskom, which is unable to meet local demand and has implemented rolling blackouts, now in their sixth day.

“Load shedding is thus being implemented over and above the advertised schedule,” Zesa said in an e-mailed statement on Tuesday.

Zimbabwe has been experiencing daily outages of as much as 18 hours daily owing to a drought that has slashed its hydro-power supply. The situation is exacerbated by frequent breakdowns at its main thermal power station, Hwange.  — Reported by Ray Ndlovu, (c) 2019 Bloomberg LP