Brasília – Former Nigerian finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala was appointed on Monday (15) as the first woman and first African director-general of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Okonjo-Iweala starts her new job in early March, and her term, renewable, will expire on August 31, 2025.
She will replace Brazilian diplomat Roberto Azevêdo, who left office last September. The office was vacant since then because Donald Trump administration supported the South Korean rival Yoo Myung-hee, and this deal must be agreed by consensus. The endorsement of the Biden administration cleared the last obstacle to her appointment.
A self-declared “doer” with a track record of taking on seemingly intractable problems, Okonjo-Iweala will have her work cut out for her. As director-general, a position that wields limited formal power, Okonjo-Iweala will need to broker international trade talks in the face of persistent United States-China conflict, respond to pressure to reform trade rules, and counter protectionism heightened by the COVID-19 pandemic.
In her acceptance speech at the WTO, she said that getting a trade deal at the next major ministerial meeting would be a “top priority” and also urged members to reject vaccine nationalism, according to a delegate attending the closed meeting, which was held virtually. In the same speech, she described the challenges facing the body as “numerous and tricky but not insurmountable.”
Nigerian
A 25-year veteran of the World Bank, where she oversaw an USD81 billion portfolio, Okonjo-Iweala ran against seven other candidates by espousing a belief in trade’s ability to lift people out of poverty. She studied development economics at Harvard after experiencing civil war in Nigeria as a teenager. She returned to the country in 2003 to serve as finance minister and backers point to her hard-nose negotiating skills that helped seal a deal to cancel billions of dollars of Nigerian debt with the Paris Club of creditor nations in 2005.
Translated by Guilherme Miranda
