By Ishaya Ibrahim, News Editor
Nigeria’s economic leading light, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, has been elected the director-general of the World Trade Organisation (WTO).
Okonjo-Iweala won the vote with a wide margin to defeat South Korean Yoo Myung hee.
Okonjo-Iweala’s victory makes her the first woman WTO DG and first African to be so elected for the global economic job.
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She was supported by her continent, Africa and other continents.
Her victory came days after European Union member nations backed her candidacy against Ms. Myung hee, who was supported by the United States.
Earlier this month, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, chairman of the African Union, said Africa will ensure her emergence for the top WTO job.
Background
Nationality was not required to become director general of the WTO, but Okonjo-Iweala let it be known last month that she has a United States citizenship although she applied for the post as a Nigerian.
She used the U.S. connection to burnish her competitiveness with seven other candidates to get the job of resolving global trade issues, especially among the super powers, highlighted by the festering disputes between the U.S. and China.
Okonjo-Iweala was born in Nigeria but left in the 1970s for the U.S. to attend Harvard and later MIT, where she obtained a PhD in developmental economics.
Africa has never produced someone at the helm of the WTO. Among the other candidates for the job was Amina Mohamed, a woman from Kenya.
Okonjo-Iweala obtained American citizenship in 2019, her spokeswoman told Bloomberg News, after spending most of her career at the World Bank and living in the Washington suburbs.
It is not uncommon for international civil servants who spend long stretches working abroad to take a second citizenship, especially when their families have been living overseas with them, the spokeswoman said.
Eight candidates, from Nigeria to Mexico and Moldova, vied to become WTO director general, in place of Roberto Azevedo, who stepped down in August.
Brief biography
Okonjo-Iweala, 66, an economist and international development expert, sits on the boards of Standard Chartered Bank, Twitter, Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI), and the African Risk Capacity (ARC).
She spent 25 years as a development economist at the World Bank, where she served as managing director (operations) between 2007 and 2011, then twice became Nigeria’s finance minister from 2003 to 2006 and 2011 to 2015.
She graduated from Harvard University with a degree in economics in 1976 and earned her Ph.D in regional economics and development from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1981.