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Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has been appointed as the new WTO Director-General. She is now the first woman and the first African to lead the WTO. On Monday, the 15th of February 2021, World Trade Organization countries ratified the consensus appointment of Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala as the new director-general.
On March 1, Okonjo-Iweala will take office and select her four deputies on the basis of members’ recommendations. Her term will last until August 31, 2025, implying that it will last four years and six months, which is an exceptionally long term for the head of the WTO.
This announcement was a follow-up to the backing of the Okonjo-Iweala’s candidacy by the new president of the United States of America, Joseph R. Biden Jnr on the 5th of February, effectively unlocking the US-induced deadlock between the U.S.-supported South Korean trade minister Yoo Myung-hee and Okonjo-Iweala, whom all the other WTO members rallied behind several months ago.
Okonjo-Iweala is the World Trade Organization’s first African and first woman director-general. A dual Nigerian-American national, she served as Nigeria’s finance minister and worked at the World Bank for several decades.
President Joe Biden asserted that the candidacy of Okonjo-Iweala will bring about “fresh energy into the trade body” which was seriously battered by the former president of the United States, Donald Trump due to his disdain for multilateralism.
It should be noted that in 2019, the Appellate Body, the world’s main court for trade disputes effectively stopped working just because the United States consistently vetoed the appointment of new judges.
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The 66-year-old Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala who recently took out US citizenship revels in being a Nigerian and is fiercely patriotic – flaunting her African identity in her African-print tailored outfits.
In 2012, she told a BBC Correspondent that she adopted her trademark attire because it is an easy answer for a smart look, and a thrifty one at that, given she estimated each outfit cost around $25.
The Harvard-trained development economist is seen as a down-to-earth, hard worker, who thinks that the WTO needed was a shake-up.
In her word, she said that “They need something different, it cannot be business as usual for the WTO. They need someone willing to do the reforms and lead.”
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala was born in Nigeria in 1954 and studied Economics at the prestigious American University, Harvard University from 1973 to 1976. She later proceeded to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where she earned a PhD in Regional Economics and Development Economics in 1981.
She worked at the World Bank for 25 years where she rose to the position of Managing Director between 2007 and 2011.
She was appointed as the Finance Minister twice by the government of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan between 2003-2006 and 2011-2015 respectively. It should be noted that she was the first woman to hold such a position in Nigeria. She also briefly served as the Foreign Affairs Minister and the Coordinating Minister for the Economy between 2006 and 2011 respectively.
She currently sits on the board of Twitter, Standard Chartered Bank and the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI).
The Buhari-Osibajo administration nominated her for the position of the Director-General of the World Trade Organization in 2020.
Her well-demonstrated no-nonsense approach, hard work and resilience would definitely aid her success as the Director-General of the World Trade Organization.
