Dr. ElSherif is the founding chairman of the Regional Information Technology and Software Engineering Center (RITSEC) since 1992. Under his management and leadership, RITSEC has been a pioneer and regional leader in societal innovation. RITSEC's mission has been focusing on the Arab World, particularly on the challenges of socio-economic development and the use of ICT and knowledge base to support the process transformation of the Arab World. ??Under his guidance, RITSEC has contributed to: 1) introducing the internet to Egypt, the Arab world and Africa, 2) being the world leader in building information and decision support centers (IDSC) in Egypt and Arab World, 3) being the world leader in cultureware and the use of ICT to digitize museums, manuscripts, archeological sites...etc, 4) being the regional leader in software engineering, 5) establishing RITI (a Regional Information Technology Institute), 6) being a world leader in promoting ICT for kids (21st Century Kids Club), 7) being the regional leader in e-Learning services, 8) being the leader in usage of ICT for development.

Since it was established RITSEC has been supporting the development of information technology and software aiming at the acceleration of socio-economic development in the region, ultimately enabling it to compete globally. Under his leadership, a number of initiatives in high priority areas were implemented in the fields of education, and professional development, as well as e-commerce, cultural heritage documentation and preservation and intellectual property rights.