Prof. Victor W. Mbarika is the Stallings Distinguished International Scholar and an MIS professor at East Carolina University (ECU) within the University of North Carolina System, in Greenville, North Carolina, USA. Prof. Mbarika is Founder and President, Board of Trustees, of The Information and Communication Technology University(ICT University), with multiple campuses based in developing countries. He is a philanthropist and has funded multiple ICT projects and scholarships worldwide. He is founder of the ECU International Center for Information Technology and Development. Prof. Mbarika serves (or has served) as Visiting Professor at several Universities worldwide and is currently Visiting Leo Endowed Professor and Visiting Legacy Endowed Chair at Legacy University. He is an ICT consultant and holds a BSc in MIS from the U.S. International University, MSc in MIS from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Ph.D. in MIS from Auburn University, USA. He completed his BSc, MSc and PhD, all in five years.
Prof. Mbarika is recipient of three Lifetime Achievement Awards in higher education. He has authored over 250 academic publications in the form of books, peer reviewed journals, conference proceedings and book chapters. Every year, he serves as Keynote Speaker at multiple conferences worldwide, including speeches at the United Nations—ITU, Harvard University Conferences, African Union, etc. Much of his research is on technology transfer in resource-poor settings. He was cited as being “in the forefront of academic research into ICT implementation in Africa, and has provided a theoretically-informed framework for understanding ICTs in less developed countries…” His scholarly publications have appeared in several of the “Basket of Top Eight” Information Systems journals. This includes publications in Journal of the Association for Information Systems, European Journal of Information Systems, Information Systems Journal, Journal of Information Technology, as well as in top ranked allied journals such as IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, IEEE Transactions on Education, IEEE Transactions on IT in Biomedicine, IEEE Spectrum, Communications of the ACM, The Information Society and Journal of the American Society for Information Sciences. His work has also appeared in major media outlets such as Reuters and The Associated Press (AP), and the BBC. He has chaired (supervised) over 25 PhD students that have become University Presidents, Deans, Full Professors, Department Chairs and top government officials worldwide. He has received multiple grants (over $4 million) from the National Science Foundation, NASA, KPMG, Microsoft, African Development Bank, and other donors. Born in Cameroon, but now a US citizen, INSPIRE Magazine named Prof. Mbarika as one of the top 10 personalities in the diaspora influencing Cameroon and one of the top 100 overall.

Prof. Mbarika has received the prestigious U.S. State Department Fulbright grant five times to bring in scholars from developing nations to serve at his research center, ICITD. He is Founding Editor-in-Chief of The African Journal of Information Systems and senior board member for several academic journals internationally. Prof. Mbarika is a Lifetime Member of Beta Gama Sigma International Honor Society. He is member of the Association of Information Systems, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), The Association for Computing Machinery, etc. He holds over 30 academic excellence awards and has been featured on the cover page of several newspapers and magazines highlighting his research and consulting activities.