Professor Lighton Dube is an Associate Professor of Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness and is currently the Coordinator of the Doctor of Business Administration degree at the ZOU Graduate School of Business. He holds a Doctor of Business Administration in International Business (University of Southern Queensland, Australia), a Master of Business Administration in Environmental Management (University of Southern Queensland, Australia), a Master of Science in Agricultural Economics (UZ) and A Bachelor of Science Agriculture Honours in Agricultural Economics (UZ). He also holds various professional certificates in Intellectual Property Management.

Professor Dube is a passionate international development practitioner, researcher, and academic whose research interests are rural development and smallholder agriculture development issues. He has published over 40 peer-reviewed research articles on various topics affecting smallholder agriculture productivity and development in Zimbabwe and the SADC region. Prof Dube has also successfully supervised 6 Doctor of Philosophy (DPhil) and other several postgraduate students mainly in the area of agricultural economics, agribusiness management, and business administration. He is also the founder and managing editor of the Zimbabwe Journal of Business, Economics and Management which is published by the Zimbabwe Open University. Prof Dube has also served as an External Examiner for the Botswana Open University.

Outside academics, Prof Dube has also worked for Agritex as an Agricultural Extension Specialist responsible for food security and early warning and for the European Union as a Development Cooperation Manager. He has also done international monitoring and evaluation consultancy work for various international organizations among them the UN FAO, USAID, DFID, World Bank, GIZ, and the African Union Commission Department of Rural Economy and Agriculture (DREA) where he provided leadership in the development of the first-ever monitoring and reporting framework for disaster risk reduction for the African continent. Prof Dube has also participated in the development of the new land policy in Zimbabwe as a rural development, rural finance, and investment expert under the leadership of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation.

Selected Publications

1. Lighton Dube and Emmanuel Guveya (2013). Land Tenure Security and Farm Investments Amongst Small Scale Commercial Farmers in Zimbabwe. Journal of Sustainable Development in Africa 15(5): 107-121

2. Lighton Dube and Emmanuel Guveya (2014). Productivity Analysis of Smallholder Out-Grower Tea (CamelliaSinensis) Farming in Chipinge District of Zimbabwe. Journal for Agriculture Economics and Rural Development 2(4): 128-139

3. Lighton Dube (2017). Farmer to Farmer Extension Approach: Analysis of Extent of Adoption by Smallholder Farmers in Manicaland and Masvingo Provinces of Zimbabwe. Journal of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development 3(1):149-160

4. Amos Tendai Munzara and Lighton Dube (2020). The Impact of the Multicurrency System on Foreign Direct Investment Inflows to Zimbabwe, Journal of Economics and Political Sciences 1(2): 12-25

5. Zvinaiye Chimbadzwa, Lighton Dube and Emmanuel Guveya (2020). Factors Affecting Workforce Diversity for Firms Listed on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange, International Journal of Humanities, Art and Social Studies 5(3):53-58

6. Lighton Dube (2020). Factors Influencing Market Participation by Smallholder Farmers in Masvingo and Manicaland Provinces, Zimbabwe, International Journal of Agricultural Economics 5(6):313-320

7. Kennedy Tapiwa Zimunya and Lighton Dube (2021). Technical Efficiency of Broiler Contract Farming in Chegutu District of Zimbabwe: A Stochastic Frontier Analysis, Scholars Journal of Agriculture and Veterinary Sciences 8(9): 95-101