In Zimbabwe’s major towns and cities, small shops selling solar panels, solar batteries, power inverters, and other solar energy products are mushrooming in almost every available space. Outside these small, dingy establishments, owners and their ragtag protégés aggressively tout their products and accost potential customers—who might not realize they’re being scammed.
Amid widespread power outages caused by climate change-fueled droughts, demand for solar products is booming. And as a result, so are fake solar panels that are cheaper than the genuine article. Unscrupulous businesses and con artists are capitalizing on the market to make a profit at the expense of their victims.
For more than a decade, Zimbabwe has been ravaged by severe droughts that have blunted power generation at the country's major hydroelectric power station at Kariba Dam. At the height of the 2018 to 2020 drought, water levels at Kariba Dam fell to around 30 percent of their maximum level. Meanwhile, up to 70 percent of the country’s electricity requirements came from hydropower. Now, Zimbabwe is paying the price for relying heavily on one source of electricity: Severe droughts have demolished the country’s energy supply thereby plunging towns and cities into unrelenting darkness.
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Rolling power cuts have now become the norm, with some residential areas going without electricity for up to 18 hours a day. These outages have forced many people to seek alternative sources of energy, with many opting for rooftop solar panels—which makes sense. Zimbabwe’s long hours of sunlight make solar energy a viable and convenient option. Today, more than 40 percent of households in the country have rooftop solar panels and solar water heating systems.
But it comes at a cost. The boom in solar energy demand has created a thriving market for substandard and even fake solar products. These products are cheap, with most of them originating from China. And many unsuspecting Zimbabweans have fallen prey to bad actors who are taking advantage of their customers’ ignorance, since many in Zimbabwe cannot distinguish between genuine and fake panels.
A shop in Mutare, Zimbabwe, sells solar panels.
Andrew Mambondiyani“A solar panel is a solar panel, right? Are they different?” Tinos Chiroto, a resident of Mutare, Zimbabwe, told The Daily Beast with a chuckle. Chiroto was searching for bargains on solar panels in downtown Mutare but was oblivious of the fake products on the market. After being made aware of the scam, he said he would “now be careful and only consider reputable shops.” Even that comes with its own set of challenges for customers.
“Those so-called reputable shops are very expensive and I might not afford the two solar panels I’m looking for,” Chiroto added.
Chiroto said he bought one small solar panel and a battery from one of the downtown shops a year ago but he admitted that it was not working as expected. At first, he thought that the solar panel’s poor performance was because of its small size, but now he suspects it has “more to do with the quality of the product.”
Despite the risks customers like Chiroto face when shopping for solar panels, Tawanda Chitiyo, the director of Zimbabwe-based clean energy startup Tawanda Energy Ltd, told The Daily Beast that currently there were no effective measures in place to regulate the solar products on the market. The best that the country has is the Standards Association of Zimbabwe (SAZ), the regulatory body that helps facilitate development and use of national standards to ostensibly protect consumer welfare. The SAZ has a product certification process, which “makes it possible for goods produced under an approved system of supervision and control to be licensed as complying with the appropriate standard and to bear the association certification mark.” However, in practice, it is severely lacking.
“The SAZ currently monitors quality control through the voluntary certification scheme, but very few if any of the suppliers [of solar products] are willing to go through the process of quality checking of their products,” Chitiyo explained.
On top of this, identifying counterfeit solar products isn’t easy, Chitiyo said some of the fake solar products look exactly like the real ones and some are imitations of known brands on the market. “The problem is serious, judging by the number of complaints we get from customers who are not satisfied,” he said. “Hence the need for importers and suppliers to conform to a stipulated minimum quality standard.”
To address these issues, Chitiyo believes the government should quickly set up a solar testing laboratory that was originally announced in 2016, to combat the influx of fake solar products in the Zimbabwean market. The laboratory would test and verify the quality of various solar equipment including solar panels, inverters, controllers and batteries for both domestic and industrial use. However, it has yet to roll out.
In another lagging effort to protect consumers, the Zimbabwe Ministry of Energy and Power Development in consultation with the Zimbabwe Energy Regulatory Authority (ZERA) proposed the Electricity (Solar Photovoltaic Systems) Regulations in 2020. Among other things, it would prohibit people and businesses from engaging in the importation, manufacture, sale, or installation of solar photovoltaic (PV) systems or solar photovoltaic system components without a valid license issued by the ZERA. Additionally, a manufacturer or importer of PV systems, components, and consumer devices will need to ensure that the products conform to the relevant Zimbabwe standard or any other subsequent or replacement standards.
However, this law, like the solar testing laboratory, has yet to be enacted. When The Daily Beast reached out for a comment on why it hasn’t been created, ZERA did not respond to the request.
On its website, ZERA also shows a list of recommended solar companies in the country. Despite the recommendations, ZERA’s website states: “ZERA cannot accept any liability whatsoever to any person or company for any financial loss or any damages arising from the use of this information.” This leaves consumers still at the mercy of unscrupulous dealers of fake solar products. Exacerbating the issue is the fact that many people aren’t even aware of the existence of ZERA, let alone the authority’s list of recommended solar companies.
Nonetheless, Chitiyo emphasized that customers should buy from retailers who would offer a valid warranty on their products when possible. Legitimate solar providers should also give customers a warranty of between 25 and 30 years.
“They [consumers] should stick to some international retailers who do not fake guarantees or misrepresent their products,” Chitiyo said. “A customer should not look for a bargain too much.”
And Zimbabwe economist and former legislator, Eddie Cross, told The Daily Beast that consumers should buy solar products from reputable businesses. "[A consumer should] demand a guarantee and ensure that installation is done by a decent contractor with a reputation,” he said.
However, in the absence of a national quality control on imported solar products, many people in Zimbabwe continue to fall prey to unscrupulous businesses selling fake products. And unless the government moves in quickly with proper legislation to protect consumers, these fake solar products will keep on weighing down efforts by residents to switch from the unreliable national grid to cleaner and renewable solar energy.
