He put himself through correspondence courses from O-Level through A-Level and moved on to the Zimbabwe Fertiliser Company as a bookkeeper.

After taking over the governorship of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, Gono implemented a host of highly criticized policies in a bid to try to keep the Zimbabwean dollar afloat.

As predicted by the textbook quantity theory of money, this practice devalued the Zimbabwean dollar and caused hyperinflation.

Gono denied media claims that he had opposed price cuts that the government instituted to arrest inflation.

As time went by, it became apparent that the RBZ had instituted price cuts that saw bare shelves in shops and many businesses closing.

With the shortages of inputs in the agriculture the RBZ came to the forefront to try to bail the sector out by helping with fertilizer and machinery procurement.

Backed by vice president Joyce Mujuru, Gono has several times called for an end to the farm invasions sanctioned by the ZANU-PF party, as these destroy the Zimbabwean economy.

In an interview with the state-controlled The Herald newspaper, he said, "I have openly condemned such retrogressive acts as destruction of horticultural greenhouses, decimation of tobacco barns, institution of fresh farm invasions".

Gono admitted that his efforts to rescue and improve the economy of Zimbabwe were being thwarted and risked failure.

[32] However, unlike others, he is said to have bought and paid for it in the late 1990s before the land redistribution program in which other farms were confiscated from localised white farmers.

It was later reported that the story could have been made up as a part of internal fighting inside the ruling party or the RBZ.