Was your phone stolen in South Africa? GSM Zimbabwe has launched WhatsApp IMEI checker

If you’ve bought a phone in town recently, can you say for sure where it came from? Most of us can’t. That’s the gap GSM Zimbabwe is trying to close with a new WhatsApp bot that checks a phone’s IMEI and tells you what you’re really buying.

The team gave us a few credits to test the service with and we came away impressed. You send “Hi” to the bot (263790354368), give it the IMEI, pay with EcoCash and the report comes right there inside WhatsApp.

The problem it’s going after is quite significant in Zimbabwe even though it’s hard to quantify. There are a lot of fake and refurbished smartphones in the Zimbabwe. Hector Chikomba, the founder of GSM Zimbabwe, says there’s a also the huge problem of phones stolen in other countries showing up in Zimbabwe.

“We are seeing a massive trend of phones stolen in other countries and loan-defaulted phones being dumped in Zimbabwe,” he said in an announcement of the IMEI checker. Those phones, he said, often work perfectly on Econet and NetOne. So the buyer has no reason to suspect anything.

The trouble comes later. If this new owner takes that phone to South Africa, it may refuse to connect to networks there because its IMEI has been blacklisted on the GSMA database. Worse, if the phone was reported stolen in a robbery or hijacking case, or is still being tracked by the lender that financed it, an innocent buyer could end up having to explain how they came to have it.

Those lenders are the other trap. In South Africa, phones sold on credit through schemes like FoneYam and PayJoy can be locked remotely using Samsung’s Knox Guard when payments stop. GSM Zimbabwe says plenty of these devices are now being sold in Zimbabwe, and the person who pays for one has no idea it could be bricked.

Here’s an example of a phone which, though not a grey import or fake, has an outstanding credit issue in South Africa.

For now the bot checks Apple and Samsung phones only. Other brands are coming, Hector says.

The report shows the phone’s real age, the manufacture date, the original purchase and activation date, and whether it’s still under warranty.

It tells you whether Apple or Samsung lists the device as refurbished or as a replacement unit. It even shows the phone’s original colour, which is a neat way to catch a device that has been put in a new housing. Then it looks for hidden locks: iCloud status, MDM corporate locks, carrier locks and Samsung Knox Guard.

Checking a phone costs $3 which is paid via EcoCash. You enter your EcoCash phone number an you receive a prompt and you pay.

Hector says he was moved to build it after watching Zim Tech Guy’s The Shocking Truth About Phones Sold as New in Zimbabwe. In it he claims that roughly 80% of smartphones sold as “brand new” in Zimbabwe are refurbished devices resealed in new boxes. That’s his figure and I’d love to see the data behind it. Still, nobody who has shopped for a phone in Zimbabwe will tell you the problem isn’t real.

GSM Zimbabwe itself grew out of repair work. Hector started out fixing computers before switching to phones. His reasoning was simple. When a computer breaks, people can put it aside for a while. A phone is something you need every single day.

Over the years he saw how hard it was for local technicians to find help and good information. So the team recently launched the GSM Zimbabwe Community, a platform built just for Zimbabwean phone repair technicians. It’s a place to post technical questions, share fixes and find files like schematics.

There’s a training angle too. A few years ago Hector ran a free short course on phone repair, and people have been asking for a full programme ever since. He says he’ll launch a full Cellphone Software Repair Course in December, aimed at giving young people a practical skill they can earn from.

If you’re about to buy an iPhone or a Samsung, especially one that’s “new” at a price that seems too good to be true, run the IMEI first. It takes a minute. You can start the bot here: wa.me/263790354368.

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