Zonful Energy

The company

Zonful Energy provides modular, decentralised and scalable solar energy systems on a PAYG basis to rural, urban and peri-urban off-grid consumers.

Problem

In Zimbabwe, 56.5% of the population uses the internet and 7.6 million people are offline.

GSMA Project

In March 2021, Zonful Energy received a GSMA grant to distribute low-cost smartphones and data bundles with 24-month data plans, and to tackle the digital skills barrier by teaching customers how to use mobile internet through the GSMA Mobile Internet Skills Training Toolkit (MISTT), in collaboration with Econet.

Outcomes

Received debt investment from the LEO Impact Fund in April 2025.

Traction

As of February 2025, 63,000 customers purchased PAYG smartphones.

A message from the founder

“There is a huge potential to scale. We have gone through the pilot and already there is a huge demand in terms of customers wanting to move away from the basic phones.”

– William Ponella, Founder and CEO