Africa At The Helm Of World Trade Organization

By Clinton Ochieng

Former Nigerian finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala received unanimous backing on Monday to become the first woman and first African director-general of the World Trade Organization.

This comes three months after the Trump administration rejected her. 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 organization, no longer in the White House.

By the close of nominations last week, the race had attracted eight candidates, including three from Africa. They included Kenya’s former Foreign Minister and current Sports Cabinet Secretary Amina Mohamed, ex-Nigerian Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who currently serves on the boards of a number of global organizations, and Egyptian commercial law academic Abdel-Hamid Mamdouh.

Others were former UK Trade Secretary, Dr. Liam Fox, Mr. Jesús Seade Kuri of Mexico, Moldova’s Tudor Ulianovschi, Saudi Arabia’s former Economy Minister Mohammad Mazia al-Tualjri, and Ms. Yoo Myung-hee, South Korea’s trade minister.

The eight were seeking to replace Brazilian Roberto de Azevedo, who has served since 2013. 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.

“What it (the WTO) needs is someone who has the capability to drive reform, who knows the trade and who does not want to see business as usual. And that is me,” she said on Monday. Earlier she told Reuters in an interview that her top priority would be to ensure the trade body does more to address the COVID-19 pandemic, calling the disparities in vaccine rates between rich and poor countries “unconscionable” and urging members to lift export restrictions on medical items.

The 26-year-old WTO that Okonjo-Iweala inherits after a six-month leadership gap is partially paralyzed, 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 countries, notably China, cannot cling to exceptions and that rules need to change to reflect China’s economic growth.

Okonjo-Iweala, who is a special envoy for the World Health Organization on COVID-19 and, until the recent chair of the board of global vaccine alliance Gavi, said on Monday she wanted to build a framework on a pandemic response “so that next time we don’t waste time trying to figure out how to respond.”

About the author

Clinton Odongo is a journalist with a nose for news that cuts across socioeconomic issues.