Dr. Canaan Farirai. Dube
LLB (Hons) (Unilag); LLB (UZ); MBA (MSU)
Senior Partner and Head Trade & Investment Unit
FOUNDING & SENIOR PARTNER | HEAD, TRADE & INVESTMENT GROUP
Dr Canaan Farirai Dube is the Founding and Senior Partner of DMH and heads the firm's Trade & Investment Group. With 42 years of legal experience, including 28 years with the Firm, he provides strategic legal advice on corporate governance, trade and investment, mergers and acquisitions, organisational restructuring, corporate leadership, and regulatory compliance.
He has extensive experience advising multinational corporations, financial institutions, government ministries, State-Owned Enterprises, and foreign investors on complex commercial and investment matters. His practice includes investment structuring, Zimbabwe Investment and Development Agency (ZIDA) registration, exchange control compliance, indigenisation requirements, mining rights, commercial agreements, and cross-border investment mandates. He is registered and practising in both Zimbabwe and Botswana.
He began his legal career in the Attorney General's Office, serving as a Public Prosecutor and subsequently as a Senior Law Officer in the Civil Division. This provided a strong foundation in public law, civil litigation, and criminal procedure, which has been complemented by over four decades in private practice.
Dr Dube is widely recognised for his expertise in legislative drafting, policy development and law reform. He drafted the Bill that became the Public Entities Corporate Governance Act and contributed to the development of the indigenisation legislative framework. He has also undertaken World Bank-funded work on organisational design, restructuring and corporate governance, including legislative reform recommendations for the Zambezi River Authority.
A recognised authority on corporate governance, he has trained boards and senior executives across the public and private sectors and has facilitated corporate governance programmes for numerous institutions. He has served as Zimbabwe's representative on the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) Panel of Conciliators and has contributed to corporate governance initiatives regionally and internationally. Dr Dube currently serves as Chairman of Hippo Valley Estates Limited, the Deposit Protection Corporation of Zimbabwe and the National Social Security Authority Staff Pension Fund. He is also the Founder and Chairman of the Zimbabwe Leadership Forum (ZIMLEF).
He is the author of Corporate Governance: Non-Executive Directors' Independence – Fact or Fiction (2008) and was the principal author of the National Code on Corporate Governance in Zimbabwe (2014). He holds an LLB (Hons) from the University of Lagos, an LLB from the University of Zimbabwe, an MBA from Midlands State University, and a Doctor of Business Leadership from Midlands State University.