Nigeria's Okonjo-Iweala to make history as head of WTO
Send a link to a friend
[February 15, 2021] By
Emma Farge, Alexis Akwagyiram and Philip Blenkinsop
GENEVA (Reuters) - Three months after the
Trump administration rejected her, former Nigerian finance minister
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is set to receive unanimous backing on Monday to
become the first woman and first African director-general of the World
Trade Organization.
A self-declared "doer" with a track record of taking on seemingly
intractable problems, Okonjo-Iweala will have her work cut out for her
at the trade body, even with Donald Trump, who had threatened to pull
the United States out of the organisation, no longer in the White House.
As director-general, a position that wields limited formal power,
Okonjo-Iweala, 66, will need to broker international trade talks in the
face of persistent U.S.-China conflict; respond to pressure to reform
trade rules; and counter protectionism heightened by the COVID-19
pandemic.
A 25-year veteran of the World Bank, where she oversaw an $81 billion
portfolio, Okonjo-Iweala ran against seven other candidates by espousing
a belief in trade's ability to lift people out of poverty.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2021/Feb/15/images/ads/current/LPL_small%201.gif)
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.
"She brings stature, she brings experience, a network and a temperament
of trying to get things done, which is quite a welcome lot in my view,"
former WTO chief Pascal Lamy told Reuters. "I think she's a good
choice."
Key to her success will be her ability to operate in the centre of a
"U.S.-EU-China triangle", he said.
The endorsement of the Biden administration cleared the last obstacle to
her appointment.
SWEET BUT STRONG
Okonjo-Iweala becomes one of the few female heads of a major
multilateral body. She is expected to join the WTO's Geneva lakeside
headquarters within weeks where her portrait is set to be hung beside
others of men, mostly white and from rich countries.
Her bright Nigerian prints are sure to stand out among the suits there
where the majority of top staff are also men, like most of the delegates
and ministers that walk its corridors.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2021/Feb/15/images/ads/current/charrons_bch041713.png)
The Trump administration's main criticism of her was that she lacked
direct trade experience compared to her main South Korean rival and even
supporters say she will have to quickly get up to speed on the
technicalities of trade negotiations.
She has rejected this, saying that she has plenty of experience of trade
plus other expertise.
"The qualities I have are even better," she said.
[to top of second column] |
![](../images/021521pics/busine11.jpg)
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala poses outside a Nigerian diplomatic residence in
Chambesy, near Geneva, Switzerland, September 29, 2020. REUTERS/Emma
Farge/File Photo
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2021/Feb/15/images/ads/current/bennett_lda_123015.png)
Raised by academics, the mother-of-four earned a reputation for hard
work and modesty amid the pomp of Nigeria's governing class,
acquaintances say.
"She is persistent and stubborn," said Kingsley Moghalu, former deputy
governor of Nigeria's central bank who worked with her when she was the
country's first female finance minister.
Even when her elderly mother was kidnapped in the Niger Delta, she
refused to back down on a series of oil reforms, one of several
incidents that earned her the nickname 'Okonjo-Wahala', Wahala meaning
"trouble" in Nigerian Pidgin.
"People recognise that this is not someone who is going to tolerate
nonsense," her son Uzodinma Iweala, a writer, told Reuters.
"She's a very strong woman like many African woman. There's that song
'Sweet Mother' and that's true for her but you also know that you don't
cross a Sweet Mother."
REFORMING THE UNREFORMABLE
The 26-year-old WTO that Okonjo-Iweala inherits after a six-month
leadership gap is partially paralysed, thanks to the Trump
administration which blocked appointments to its top appeals body that
acts as the global arbiter of trade disputes.
But even before Trump, negotiators had struggled to clinch deals that
must be agreed by consensus, with the United States and other developed
WTO members arguing that developing counties, notably China, cannot
cling on to exceptions and that rules need to change to reflect China's
economic growth.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2016/Aug/26/images/ads/current/ldn_business_directory_small2_2016.png)
Okonjo-Iweala who is a special envoy for the World Health Organization
on COVID-19 and, until recently chair of the board of global vaccine
alliance Gavi, told Reuters that trade's contribution to public health
would be a priority.
The WTO currently faces deadlock over an issue of waiving intellectual
property rights for COVID-19 drugs, with many wealthy countries opposed.
High on the to-do list will also be fisheries subsidies, the subject of
the WTO's main multilateral talks that missed a deadline to conclude by
end-2020.
Asked about the challenges ahead, she joked that a book she wrote about
fixing Nigeria's broken institutions could well apply to today's WTO:
'Reforming the Unreformable'.
"I feel I can solve the problems. I'm a known reformer, not someone who
talks about it," she said. "I've actually done it".
(Reporting by Emma Farge in Geneva, Alexis Akwagyiram in Lagos and
Philip Blenkinsop in Brussels; Editing by Carmel Crimmins)
[© 2021 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2021 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content. |