The reappointment of Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala as the Director-General of World Trade Organization (WTO) is a positive step for Nigeria. Okonjo-Iweala achieved the feat following her emergence as the sole candidate for the position.
The Chair of the General Council, Ambassador Petter Ølberg of Norway, informed WTO members on 9 November that no further nominations for the position of Director-General had been received by the deadline of 8 November indicating that the incumbent Director-General, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, was the only candidate for the role.
Her current term ends in August 2025. She made history on February 15, 2021, by becoming the first woman and African to lead the WTO. She is the seventh Director-General of the body. She had hinged her leadership on breathing new life into the organisation. Her endorsement ensures her leadership continues until 2029.
President Bola Tinubu has also hailed her unanimous reappointment for a second term and assured her of Nigeria’s steadfast support as she consolidates her bold reforms, dedication to equitable global practices and tireless efforts to promote international cooperation. Okonjo-Iweala’s reappointment comes as the WTO navigates through significant challenges. She acknowledged the challenges as she earned her second term. “We have a full agenda to deliver…and we fully intend to get to work immediately, no stopping, to try and deliver on these results,” Okonjo-Iweala told journalists, citing WTO reforms and fishing negotiations as among her priorities. The job schedule is therefore cut out for her.
The WTO is an intergovernmental organization headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, that regulates and facilitates international trade. Governments use the organization to establish, revise, and enforce the rules that govern international trade in cooperation with the United Nations System. Reputed as the world’s largest international economic organization, WTO has 166 members representing over 98 per cent of global trade and global GDP.
The organisation facilitates trade in goods, services and intellectual property among participating countries by providing a framework for negotiating trade agreements, which usually aim to reduce or eliminate tariffs, quotas, and other restrictions. These agreements are signed by representatives of member governments and ratified by their legislatures. It also administers independent dispute resolution for enforcing participants’ adherence to trade agreements and resolving trade-related disputes. The organization prohibits discrimination between trading partners, but provides exceptions for environmental protection, national security, and other important goals.
WTO officially commenced operations on 1 January 1995, as replacement for the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) that had been established in 1948. Okonjo-Iweala’s reappointment as the Director General of the organisation comes at the right time for Nigeria and other developing countries that have been under the burden of imbalance in their trade relations with the advanced nations.
It is expected that she would use her wealth of experience to bridge the gap between the technologically advanced countries and the developing nations. Nigeria should benefit from her service in WTO in its search for diversification of the economy, which presently depends so heavily on oil revenue. Let Okonjo-Iweala use her contacts and influence in WTO to ensure that all barriers preventing Nigeria and African countries from actualising their potential in international trade are dismantled.
Okonjo-Iweala is a global finance expert, an economist and international development professional with over 40 years of experience working in Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America and North America. She was formerly Chair of the Board of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. She was previously on the Boards of Standard Chartered PLC and Twitter Inc. She is a skilled negotiator and has brokered numerous agreements which have produced win-win outcomes in negotiations. She is regarded as an effective consensus builder and an honest broker enjoying the trust and confidence of governments and other stakeholders.
She had a 25-year career at the World Bank as a development economist, rising to the No. 2 position of Managing Director, Operations. She is renowned as the first female and African candidate to contest for the presidency of the World Bank Group in 2012, backed by Africa and major developing countries.
Okojo-iweala served as Nigeria’s Finance Minister (2003-2006 and 2011-2015) and briefly acted as Foreign Minister in 2006. She was involved in trade negotiations with other West African countries and contributed to the overhaul of Nigeria’s trade policy. She graduated magna cum laude with an A.B. in Economics from Harvard University (class of 1977) and earned a Ph.D. in Regional Economics and Development from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT, 1981).
She is the author of several books, including Women and Leadership: Real Lives, Real Lessons co-authored with Julia Gillard (Penguin Random House, July 2020), and Fighting Corruption is Dangerous: The Story Behind the Headlines (MIT Press, 2018), Reforming the UnReformable: Lessons from Nigeria. There is no doubt that her reappointment is indeed a significant victory for Africa, women and global leadership. We wish her a successful tenure.
