WTO Picks First Woman, African to Lead WTO
WTO picks First Woman, African to lead WTO( World Trade Organization) on Monday 15 February 2021. A Nigerian economist, and former finance minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, was appointed director-general of the World Trade Organization by representatives of the 164 member countries.
WTO appointed Okonjo-Iweala after the last remaining rival candidate, South Korean trade minister Yoo Myung-hee, withdrew from the race. She will take up her post on March 1, initially for a term that runs until August 2025.
Earlier Okonjo-Iweala enjoyed broad support from WTO members including the European Union, China, Japan, and Australia. While the United States, under the Trump administration, had favored Yoo. The recent appointment came after new United States President Joe Biden endorsed her candidacy, which had been blocked by former President Donald Trump.
On Monday, the US delegate to the WTO said he was “eager” to work with Okonjo-Iweala.
Who is Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala?
Even for an economist, there are lots of very large numbers in the life of Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. As the chair of Gavi, the vaccine alliance, she has overseen the annual immunization of millions of children. When the managing director of the World Bank, she oversaw $81bn (£58bn) worth of operations. In her stints in charge of Nigeria’s finances, she tackled Africa’s most populous country’s $30bn debt. And she has 1.5 million followers on Twitter.
There are lots of smaller numbers too; the 20 non-profit organizations that have appointed Okonjo-Iweala to their advisory boards, the major banks and corporations she has advised, the 10 honorary degrees in addition to her own doctorate, 20 or so awards, dozens of major reports authored, and the books.
Then there are the multiple lists frequently featuring Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, 66; the world’s 100 most powerful women, 100 most influential people in the world, 10 most influential women in Africa, Top 100 or 150 women in the world, and many others.
On Monday, Okonjo-Iweala made to a new list: that of the director generals of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Neither a woman nor an African Person has occupied this position before. She will take over the institution, with its budget of $220m and staff of 650, at a critical time.
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala was six when Nigeria gained its independence from Britain in 1960. She grew up in a small village in the country’s southern Delta State. Her parents, both distinguished academics, were studying in Europe on scholarships; so her and her grandmother raised her and her six siblings . Life was not easy. By the time she grew to nine, Okonjo-Iweala had learned to cook, fetch wood and manage many of the household tasks.
The civil war pitting the separatist Biafra state against the Nigerian central government disrupted her education and exposed her to further hardship. “I was eating one meal a day and children were dying. So, I learned to live very frugally. I often say I can sleep on a mud floor as well as a feathered bed and be very comfortable. It has made me someone who can do without things in life because of what we went through,” Okonjo-Iweala told Forbes magazine last year.
When her three-year-old sister became chronically ill with malaria, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala carried her for three miles to the doctor’s surgery. She pushed through a crowd of 600 and climbed through a window to get the treatment that saved the child’s life.
At the end of the war, Okonjo-Iweala went to the US to study economics at Harvard and MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). She married her childhood sweetheart and, at the age of 25. She began working for the World Bank, rising steadily up the institution’s hierarchy, travelling widely, and only leaving when invited to be finance minister of Nigeria in 2003.
The World Trade Organization is an international body that deals with the rules of trade between nations. At its heart are the WTO agreements; which the bulk of the world’s nations have negotiated among them and ratified in their legislatures.
