She is the first woman and the first person from Africa to lead the World Trade Organization. After Roberto Azevêd of Brazil, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala will lead the WTO, which she says they call a “trouble woman.”
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala was one of the favorites to head the World Trade Organization. She is a global financial expert and has twice served as Finance Minister of the Nigerian Government. Times magazine selected her among the 100 most influential people in the world in 2014, and Transparency International ranked her among the eight most prominent anti-corruption campaigns.
During her candidacy, Okonjo-Iweala said that as a possible WTO chief, she would work to broker talks between the US and China. And according to experts, she may succeed, especially after Joe Biden replaced Donald Trump in the White House. The United States was the only one who refused to show support for Okonjo-Iweala to head the WTO. But that, too, has changed.
Okonjo-Iweala doesn’t have an easy task ahead of her. The WTO has seemed incapable of effectively intervening against trade disputes in recent years, as has been shown in the US-China case. There has long been talk of the need to reform the organisation. Whether the former candidate for head of the World Bank will succeed will be in time.
