Zimbabwe, Aug. 22 -- When one of Zimbabwe's first solar mini-grid systems was installed in this drought-prone village near the Botswana border in 2016, residents thought their problems were solved.

Cheap, clean power ran irrigation pumps that kept the community's wheat, maize and vegetable fields a sea of green even as climate change-fueled droughts parched the surrounding landscape.

But the verdant fields have attracted a new problem to Mashaba: herds of hungry elephants.

As drought makes grass and other fodder harder to find, elephants have begun invading the village's tempting irrigated fields, destroying crops and irrigation canals and exasperating farmers.

"We have to stand guard in our fields all night from 6:30 pm till 3:30 in ...