{"id":424607,"date":"2024-11-30T04:49:49","date_gmt":"2024-11-30T04:49:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=424607"},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"-0001-11-29T14:00:00","slug":"Ngozi-Okonjo-Iweala-the-WTO-s-trailblazing-motivator","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/Ngozi-Okonjo-Iweala-the-WTO-s-trailblazing-motivator\/","title":{"rendered":"Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala: the WTO’s trailblazing motivator"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, reappointed on Friday as head of the World Trade Organization, hinged her leadership on breaking logjams at the sclerotic institution through craft, dynamism and sheer force of personality.<\/p>\n

The World Bank veteran, 70,\u00a0is a trailblazer. She was Nigeria’s first woman finance minister and is the first woman and the first African to run the WTO.<\/p>\n

With her no-nonsense style and disdain for red tape, she positioned herself as someone who could bang heads together and get business done.<\/p>\n

Okonjo-Iweala has pulled off some breakthroughs at the global trade body, notably sealing a long-stalled deal on curbing subsidies for harmful fishing practices.<\/p>\n

But now she must steer the WTO through the US presidency of Donald Trump — who paralysed the organisation in his first term and opposed her initial candidacy for the leadership.<\/p>\n

– ‘Forget business as usual’ –<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n

In March 2021, Okonjo-Iweala took over an organisation mired in multiple crises and struggling to help member states navigate the severe global economic slump triggered by the coronavirus pandemic.<\/p>\n

“Forget business as usual,” she pledged before taking the reins.<\/p>\n

Since taking over the 166-member WTO, Okonjo-Iweala has overseen two of its biennial ministerial conferences.<\/p>\n

The 2022 gathering at the WTO’s Geneva headquarters saw the director-general secure results and demonstrate the round-the-clock stamina essential to striking international trade deals.<\/p>\n

Countries agreed the first stage of a long-elusive deal on curbing harmful fishing subsidies, and struck agreements on bolstering food insecurity and temporarily waiving patents on Covid-19 vaccines.<\/p>\n

The second conference, in Abu Dhabi this year, secured nothing more than a temporary extension of an e-commerce moratorium, casting fresh doubt on the WTO’s effectiveness.<\/p>\n

While Okonjo-Iweala criss-crosses the world from conferences to meetings of top finance ministers and heads of diplomacy to try to move things forward, she rarely holds press conferences.<\/p>\n

She was the sole candidate to lead the WTO for four years from September 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Ngozi brings a huge amount of personal authority, credibility and capability to what’s a challenging and difficult role,” Britain’s trade minister Douglas Alexander told AFP last month.<\/p>\n

“She clearly has an ambitious agenda in relation to that interaction of trade and environment.”<\/p>\n

He praised her “steady leadership, her deep commitment to the interests of the Global South, and her understanding, as a former finance minister, of the imperative of trade for all of our economies”.<\/p>\n

– Harvard, MIT training –<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n

Born in 1954 in Ogwashi Ukwu, in Delta State, western Nigeria, Okonjo-Iweala is the daughter of a traditional ruler.<\/p>\n

She and her neurosurgeon husband, Ikemba Iweala, have four children and five grandchildren.<\/p>\n

She is often surrounded by her loved ones and she always warmly thanks her husband, who attended both ministerial conferences, for his support.<\/p>\n

A development economist by training, she spent much of her life in the United States, graduating from Harvard — where she later sent her four children — before earning a master’s degree and a doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.<\/p>\n

Okonjo-Iweala had a 25-year career at the World Bank, eventually becoming its number two.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She was the Washington-based institution’s managing director and ran for the top job in 2012.<\/p>\n

Her first term as Nigeria’s finance minister, from 2003 to 2006, was followed by two months as the foreign minister.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She was the first woman to hold both positions.<\/p>\n

She returned to the finance minister brief from 2011 to 2015 under president Goodluck Jonathan.<\/p>\n

Okonjo-Iweala portrayed herself as a champion against Nigeria’s rampant corruption — and said her own mother was even kidnapped over her attempts to tackle the scourge.<\/p>\n

But her critics charged she did not do enough to stop corruption while in power.<\/p>\n

Okonjo-Iweala also held a slew of directorships at places like Standard Chartered Bank and the Rockefeller Foundation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She was on the Twitter board of directors and chaired Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance.<\/p>\n

When Roberto Azevedo stepped down early as WTO head in August 2020, Okonjo-Iweala put herself forward and saw off seven other candidates.<\/p>\n

rjm\/nl\/gil<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has led the WTO since March 2021<\/p>\n

-PIERRE ALBOUY
<\/figcaption><\/figure>

<\/p>\n

Director-general Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala addressed the 13th WTO ministerial conference in Abu Dhabi<\/p>\n

-Giuseppe CACACE
<\/figcaption><\/figure>

<\/p>\n

Okonjo-Iweala addressed fisheries subsidies at the Abu Dhabi WTO ministerial conference<\/p>\n

-Giuseppe CACACE
<\/figcaption><\/figure>

<\/p>\n

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala with a 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup official football<\/p>\n

-Fabrice COFFRINI
<\/figcaption><\/figure>

<\/p>\n

Okonjo-Iweala launched a radical programme of economic reform when she was Nigeria’s finance minister<\/p>\n

-MONDAY EMONI
<\/figcaption><\/figure>

<\/p>\n

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala at a conference on world poverty in London in 2009<\/p>\n

-SHAUN CURRY
<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, reappointed on Friday as head of the World Trade Organization, hinged her leadership…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23812],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-424607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=424607"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424607\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=424607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=424607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=424607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}