Tan Sri Dato’ Sri Paduka Dr. Lim Kok Wing
Founder of Limkokwing University of Creative Technology · 1945–2021
The Journey of a Visionary
Tan Sri Dato’ Sri Paduka Dr. Lim Kok Wing (1945–2021) was a Malaysian artist, designer, educator, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. Born in Kuala Lumpur on 21 October 1945, he began as an illustrator and book-cover designer. His comic strip ABU became the first local serialised comic strip in Malaysia and Singapore.
In 1975, at age 29, he founded Wings Creative Consultants—among Malaysia’s first professional advertising agencies led by a local team. Wings rose into the country’s leading agencies and partnered with BBDO in 1988. He later turned fully to branding, communications, and education.
He founded Limkokwing University of Creative Technology in 1991 around industry-driven learning: creativity, technology, and entrepreneurship at the centre. The institution became Malaysia’s first private university college in 2002 and a full university in 2007, with campuses across Asia, Africa, and Europe—including Maseru, Lesotho from August 2008.
The future will always be defined by people who have the tenacity to succeed no matter what the odds may be and reach beyond the ordinary. They achieve extraordinary success, and in doing so they transform countries.
Recognition
Honours, nation-building, and philanthropy.
Lim Kok Wing received some of Malaysia’s highest civilian honours, including Commander of the Order of Loyalty to the Crown of Malaysia (PSM)—the title Tan Sri—in 1995, together with state titles such as Dato’ Sri and Dato’ Paduka.
For contributions linked to South Africa’s democratic transition and communications support around Nelson Mandela’s 1994 presidential campaign, he was awarded South Africa’s Order of the Companions of O. R. Tambo—an uncommon honour for a non-South African.
In 2006 the Malaysia Canada Business Council named him CEO of the Year. In 2007 he received an honorary professorship from the Moscow Academy of the State and Municipal Management. In 2009 Forbes Asia listed him among its Heroes of Philanthropy for education and humanitarian work.
Through the Limkokwing Foundation he supported scholarships for students worldwide, including from conflict-affected regions. After his death on 1 June 2021, UNESCO’s Institute for Information Technologies in Education remembered him as a major figure in education and philanthropy.
The Foundation
Creative education that reached Lesotho and beyond.
Lim Kok Wing argued that universities should build confidence, communication, and practical invention—not only theory. That model shaped Limkokwing campuses across Asia, Africa, and Europe.
In August 2008, Limkokwing University of Creative Technology opened in Maseru, Lesotho, with a pioneer intake of about 1,200 students across programmes such as design, IT, and architecture. It was the first Malaysian university campus in Lesotho.
The Lesotho campus continues that founding purpose: industry-relevant creative education for Basotho and international students, linking media, design, business, hospitality, and digital technology to opportunity and national development.