Current time in Harare, Zimbabwe
The current local time in Harare is shown below. Harare observes CAT.
What's the daylight saving status?
Harare does not observe daylight saving time. The local offset is fixed year-round.
When are sunrise & sunset today?
What are the timezone facts?
- Timezone
- Africa/Harare
- Standard abbreviation
- CAT
- Observes daylight saving
- No
- Country
- 🇿🇼 Zimbabwe
- Business hours
- 09:00 – 17:00 local
What's the timezone history of Harare?
Zimbabwe keeps Central Africa Time at UTC+2 year-round with no daylight saving, the same clock as South Africa and Zambia, so regional travel and trade across southern Africa rarely involve a change of hour. The highveld position at around 17 degrees south keeps daylight fairly even across the seasons. At around 31 degrees east the capital sits close to the offset's meridian, so the civil clock and the sun stay well matched through the year.
What are the working hours in Harare?
Tobacco, for which the country runs some of the largest auction floors in Africa during the selling season from roughly February to July, along with mining, agriculture, and government, anchors the working economy. The day runs broadly 08:00 to 17:00 from Monday to Friday. Years of economic turbulence and currency instability have shaped business practice, with foreign currency widely used in trade. The Christian holidays at Christmas and Easter are the main closures, alongside national days including Independence Day in April. Cross-border trade with South Africa and Zambia shapes much of the commercial week here.
Where is Harare?
Harare sits on the highveld plateau in the north-east of Zimbabwe at around 1,490 metres, which gives the capital a mild climate despite its tropical latitude. The metropolitan area holds around 2.5 million people. Laid out on a grid by British settlers in the 1890s and long known as Salisbury, it remains the country's administrative and commercial centre, surrounded by the farmland of one of the more productive agricultural regions in the country.