The ongoing crippling load shedding on Saturday affected the country’s main mobile network operator, Econet Zimbabwe resulting in the disruption of its mobile money service, EcoCash.
Individual and business financial transactions which could have cost the country hundreds of thousands of dollars were consequently disrupted.
More than 90% of transactions in Zimbabwe are done through mobile money with EcoCash dominating 99% of the market.
General life was disrupted as a social media site, WhatsApp was inaccessible for Econet subscribers, with retail outlets, service stations and all kinds of businesses could not transact.
The development comes as total power generation in the country was on Friday reported to be a measly 859 Megawatts which is less than half of the country’s installed capacity of around 2 000 Megawatts.
According to the Zimbabwe Power Company (ZPC), Kariba was only producing 392MW, Hwange 418 MW while smaller power stations Munyati and Bulawayo were producing 16MW each. Harare was producing 17MW.