Zambia and Zimbabwe experienced widespread blackouts on Sunday night, with outages occurring at approximately the same time in both nations.
The power failures, reported just after 8pm (1800 GMT) in both countries, are believed to be linked to a surge on power lines that connect the two countries to South Africa’s state power utility, Eskom.
Both Zambia’s power utility, ZESCO and the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority on Monday blamed the outage on a “power system disturbance”.
ZESA reported that its engineers had commenced the restoration process immediately after the outages.
Officials said the disturbance likely originated from the power lines supplying electricity from Eskom.
Both Zambia and Zimbabwe have increased imports from South Africa due to a worsening power deficit caused by low water levels in the jointly shared Kariba Dam.
