Prof. Luther-King Junior Zogli

Prof. Luther-King Junior Zogli is an Associate Professor at the Durban University of Technology (DUT), South Africa. His research sits at the intersection of entrepreneurship, small business development and informal economies, with a particular focus on youth economic participation in African contexts. Supported by South Africa’s National Research Foundation (NRF) and the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET), his funded work examines how young people develop entrepreneurial pathways within formal and informal economic spaces in South Africa. His broader research has followed informal workers and small business owners across urban Ghana and South Africa, where mobility consistently shapes how people access opportunities and build livelihoods.
His work has appeared in Scientific African, the Southern African Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business Management, and Progressio, among other outlets. He serves as a reviewer for the International Journal of Urban Sustainable Development and Cogent Business and Management, and is a member of the Economic Society of South Africa.
Beyond his research, Prof. Zogli has supervised over a dozen Masters and PhD graduates across the continent and played a leading role in curriculum design and programme coordination at DUT. He has also reviewed qualifications for higher education institutions across South Africa and the SADC region.
He holds that the informal economy is not the margins of African development. It is the center.