Prof Lulama Makhubela

Her formative professional life included working at the Star Newspapers and in an NGO – Read Educate and Develop (READ) Organization – as high schools’ library advisor and community reading programme coordinator in the late 1980s. Her transformational leadership skills resulted in her being appointed as the President of the Academic Staff Association at UWC. Chair of the South African National Committee of CODATA and Chair of the Human Resource Committee and Executive Committee member of the Central University of Technology Council. She served in several boards including the Telkom Foundation, Book Development Council of South Africa, National Library of South Africa, Centre of the Book, a Cancer Association of South Africa (CANSA) volunteer and a member of numerous national and international committees as the vanguard of community development and overseeing corporate governance matters. Prof Makhubela is currently appointed to the National Research Ethics Council (NHREC) for the period 2020-2023

Prof Makhubela was recently a Research Associate at the Gordon Institute of Business Science (Gibs)- a Business School of the University of Pretoria. She gives of her time in mentoring, coaching and supervising MBA students, editing research reports, and contributing to the Business School research outputs. As a Professor in Information Science at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) her proven record of achievement in teaching, research and scholarship in the fields of information literacy, access to information, knowledge management and database management and community development is evident in her publication output. She has published more than 50 scientific and popular articles in national and international journals and chapters in books. She has served as a member of editorial boards of some accredited journals, including the Development Bank of Southern Africa, which is one of the refereed journals in infrastructure and development finance.

As a certified Toastmaster International Competent Communicator, she is a sought-after Dialogue Moderator, Programme Director, Guest Speaker and Facilitator for Workshops. She has moderated high-level dialogues for BrandSA, one of which was on the Life and Times of Rholihlahla Nelson Mandela and the South African Women in Dialogue (SAWID). She presented papers worldwide, including invited papers and session chairperson at International Conferences in the UNESCO head office in France, USA, UK, Canada, Austria, Germany, China, Brazil, Ukraine; and African countries including Botswana, Kenya, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, Senegal, South Africa, Swaziland and Tanzania.

As an Advocate for Women’s Empowerment, she is a long-standing active member of the Development Commission of SAWID since 2003. She served on the Board of Khulisa Social Solutions to enhance social services to children, youth and families with an orientation towards crime reduction. She has participated in radio talk shows on Kaya, Metro, Motsweding, Power 98.7 radio stations addressing various developmental challenges facing South Africa and the continent. She was interviewed live by Leanne Manas on SABC TV on the role of research in community development and how the deficit of black women researchers in South Africa can be reversed.

As a Business owner and Serial entrepreneur, she is the founder and Managing Director of the African Research House – an independent research consulting company established in 2006. The high-quality research consulting work produced over the 12 years include Five-Year impact analysis of mitigation strategies on Gender-Based Violence and Femicide commissioned by POWA; Institutional climate surveys; large-scale national citizen satisfaction surveys; feasibility studies; institutional impact studies; branding surveys; knowledge management scoping exercises and strategy development, as well as individual and institutional research skills development in all science domains. Prof Makhubela is a recipient of the prestigious 10 000 Women Entrepreneurs training programme facilitated by Gibs and funded by Goldman Sachs in 2013. She was commissioned by Tech Central Design (TeqDC), an Engineering consulting company, to coach and mentor new graduates in soft skills to transition between theory and practice through mediating the practical world of work between 2016/17.

As an Activist in Green Economy issues, she is a founding member and was Chair of the Green Action Platform – a registered Non-Profit Organisation (NPO) that aims to promote social, environmental and economic sustainability to create new green job opportunities in both Italy and South Africa. Prof Makhubela is also a co-founder of the St Albans Eco Ministry as well as a committee member of the Johannesburg Anglican Environment Initiative (JAEI) an affiliate of the Southern African Faith Communities’ Institute SAFCEI). As Master Debater, she initiated the Young Green Warriors of more than 100 youths from different faith communities to raise awareness on environmental issues through debate on Climate Change and broader green issues.